Clustering of serum biomarkers involved in post-aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) complications

Abstract

Abstract Post-aSAH sequela is characterized by the onset of life-threatening complications along with the upregulated underlying inflammation. Cerebral vasospasm (CVS) is one of the most frequent complication after aSAH, which contributes majorly to delayed cerebral ischemia and poor clinical outcome. The objective of this study was to identify the clusters of serum biomarkers that are associated with cerebral vasospasm (CVS) after suffering from aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). In this single-center study, serum concentrations of 10 potential biomarkers, together with clinical and demographic parameters, for 66 aSAH patients were recorded within 24 h after aSAH. The dataset was split into a training set (43 patients) and a validation set. Correlation heatmaps for both datasets were computed. Variables with inconsistent correlations on the two subsets were excluded. Clusters of relevant biomarkers were identified on the complete set, separately for patients who developed post-aSAH CVS and those who did not. Two clusters were found to be specific for patients who suffered from CVS: mitochondrial gene fragments (cytochrome B (Cyt-B), cytochrome C oxidase subunit-1 (Cox-1), displacement loop (D-loop), and IL-23, and the other one, containing IL-6, IL-10, age, and Hunt and Hess score. Clusters of serum biomarkers, analyzed within 24 h of the onset of aSAH, days before the CVS development, are expressed differently in patients suffering from post-aSAH CVS, compared to patients without CVS. This suggests that these biomarkers may be involved in the pathophysiological processes leading to CVS and may be used as its early predictors. These interesting findings are potentially highly relevant for the management of CVS and call for validation on a larger sample of patients.