The correlation between CT findings of diffuse axonal injury and the expression of neuronal aquaporin in patients with craniocerebral injury

Z.-H. Yang, X.-J. Yin, G.-Y. Fu

Interventional Department, Department of Obstetrics, Hengshui People’s Hospital, Hengshui, China. 18031805001@163.com

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• Neurology
• Radiology

OBJECTIVE: The paper aimed at exploring the correlation between CT findings of diffuse axonal injury and the expression of neuronal aquaporin in patients with craniocerebral injury.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: 150 patients with diffuse axonal injury diagnosed by CT and 50 healthy physical examinators were selected as the study objects. According to the craniocerebral CT and GCS scale scores, the patients were divided into DAI light group, medium group, and heavy group. The general conditions of patients were observed and recorded, and the brain pathological morphology, craniocerebral edema and CT imaging results of the patients in each group were compared. Changes in serum and brain AQP-4 levels were detected by RT-PCR and Western blot, and the correlation between CT manifestations of DAI and the expression of neuronal aquaporin was investigated.

RESULTS: The results of DAI’s pathological morphology, cerebral edema and CT imaging showed that the brain tissue of each group of DAI had a certain degree of injury. With the increase of the injury degree, the degree of edema and the number of axonal injuries sharply increased, and the difference was significant (p-value < 0.05). Therefore, CT could be used as an effective basis for the rapid and efficient diagnosis of DAI. RT-PCR, Western blot and Spearman correlation analysis showed that the levels of AQP-4 in the serum and brain tissue of DAI patients were significantly increased. With the increase of the degree of diffuse axonal injury, the expression level of AQP-4 was further increased, and the difference was significant (p-value < 0. 05). The CT manifestations of patients in each group were positively correlated with the expression level of AQP-4 protein.

CONCLUSIONS: AQP-4 can be used as an important molecular index to judge the condition and prognosis of DAI, providing a new non-invasive detection method for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of DAI, which has high clinical application value.

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