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. 2018 Oct 12;35(21):2530–2539. doi: 10.1089/neu.2018.5675

FIG. 3.

FIG. 3.

Circulating levels of GFAPab in acute SCI predict the development of neuropathic pain. (A) Box plots showing the relative levels of GFAPab in plasma from healthy volunteers (HV) and acute SCI (aSCI) study subjects. Levels of GFAPab were significantly elevated in plasma of aSCI subjects compared to healthy volunteers. (B) Box plots showing relative levels of GFAPab in SCI subjects who subsequently developed neuropathic pain (NP) and those who did not (No NP). Acute SCI subjects who subsequently developed neuropathic pain had significantly higher GFAPab levels than those without neuropathic pain. Error bars are the 90th and 10th percentile. Outliers are represented as white circles. Horizontal line indicates the median. (C) Time course of GFAPab development for a subset of 13 SCI patients with and without neuropathic pain who had plasma samples available at four time points from 1.7 ± 0.7 to 96 ± 54 days. Longitudinal samples were not available for all of our study subjects. However, we did not identify any subjects with GFAPab-negative results at the 16- ± 7 d time point that were GFAPab positive at earlier or later time points. GFAP, glial fibrillary acidic protein; GFAPab, autoantibodies to GFAP; SCI, spinal cord injury.