The current study was designed to investigate the change of serum ficolin-3 levels and assess the prognostic predictive effect of serum ficolin-3 levels in the patients with severe traumatic brain injury.

Complement activation is one of the pathological mechanisms that contribute to the secondary brain injury after traumatic brain injury. Ficolin-mediated lectin pathways of complement activation contribute to the pathogenesis of ischemic stroke and may be additive to complement-independent inflammatory processes. Lower serum ficolin-3 levels have been demonstrated to be highly associated with unfavorable outcome after ischemic stroke. This prospective observatory study was designed to investigate the relationship between serum ficolin-3 levels and 1-week mortality, 6-month mortality and 6-month unfavorable outcome (defined as Glasgow Outcome Scale score of 1-3) in patients with severe traumatic brain injury. This study recruited 128 patients and 128 sex- and age- matched healthy controls. Serum ficolin-3 levels on admission were measured by sandwich immunoassays. It was postulated that serum ficolin-3 levels were correlated with Glasgow Coma Scale scores and ficolin-3 was identified as an independent prognostic predictor for 1-week mortality, 6-month mortality and 6-month unfavorable outcome. Thus, it was proposed that lower serum ficolin-3 levels, correlated with injury severity reflected by Glasgow Outcome Scale scores, had the potential to be the useful, complementary tool to predict short- or long- term clinical outcome after severe traumatic brain injury.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Isolated head trauma
• Postresuscitation Glasgow Coma Scale score of 8 or less.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Less than 18 years of age
• Admission time > 6 hours
• Previous head trauma
• Neurological disease including ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke
• Use of antiplatelet or anticoagulant medication
• Diabetes mellitus
• Hypertension
• Presence of other prior systemic diseases including uremia, liver cirrhosis, malignancy, and chronic heart or lung disease

The patients with isolated head trauma and postresuscitation Glasgow Coma Scale score of 8 or less.