To Örebro University

During the past decade there has been an increasing recognition of the incidence of mildtraumatic brain injury (mTBI) and a better understanding of the subtle neurological and cognitive deficitsthat may result from it. A substantial, albeit suboptimal, effort has been made to define diagnostic criteriafor mTBI and improve diagnostic accuracy. Thus, biomarkers that can accurately and objectively detectbrain injury after mTBI and, ideally, aid in clinical management are needed. In this review, we discuss thecurrent research on serum biomarkers for mTBI including their rationale and diagnostic performances.Sensitive and specific biomarkers reflecting brain injury can provide important information regardingTBI pathophysiology and serve as candidate markers for predicting abnormal computed tomographyfindings and/or the development of residual deficits in patients who sustain an mTBI. We also outline theroles of biomarkers in settings of specific interest including pediatric TBI, sports concussions and militaryinjuries, and provide perspectives on the validation of such markers for use in the clinic. Finally, emergingproteomics-based strategies for identifying novel markers will be discussed.