Estimation of COX-2 and dopamine neurotransmitter in sera of spinal cord injury patients

The current study was aimed to investigate the influence of Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and Dopamine (DA) in sera of acute spinal cord injury (SCI) patients. The study also included calcium, lipid profile and fasting glucose as biochemical tests for risk developing. COX-2 and DA were determined by using an Enzyme-linked Immune Sorbent (ELISA) kits, and the other biochemical parameters were determined by using spectrophotometric assays. The study was included sixty patients of acute SCI and sixty healthy people as control, the subjects were divided equally to males (50%) and females (50%) in each group. The differences of age were non-significant between the two groups (P>0.05). The results have shown comparable (P>0.05) levels of DA between SCI patient and controls. COX-2 level was significantly higher (P<0.05) in the serum of SCI patients compared to control. Furthermore, SCI patients have exhibited significant (P<0.05) higher levels of calcium and glucose compared to control. Lipid profile parameters were non-significantly differed (P>0.05) between the two groups. COX-2 has shown significant positive moderate correlation with DA and negative weak correlation with age in SCI patients. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) test has shown that DA and COX-2 were poor markers for diagnosing SCI in serum. In conclusion, patients with acute SCI have elevated COX-2 levels and this may result from the inflammatory induction due to tissue damage and takes a part in pain following the injury