Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33146954›Full record

ReviewAnnals of clinical and translational neurology2020

Blood neurofilament light: a critical review of its application to neurologic disease.

Christian Barro, Tanuja Chitnis, Howard L Weiner

Registry-linked trialOpen access · goldAbstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in Annals of clinical and translational neurology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05821816 (Evaluation of the Efficacy of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation), which is not on this map. Cited by 164 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
164citing papers in PubMed, 3 pooled it
11.8field-weighted citation impact, top 1% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

NCT05821816 nacompletednot on this mapstarted 2023, after this paper: background citation

Evaluation of the Efficacy of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) on Neurodegeneration and Neuromotor Recovery on Post-stroke Patients. a Pilot Study

TypeinterventionalSponsorI.R.C.C.S. Fondazione Santa LuciaRan2023 to 2025Enrolled50ConditionsStrokeArmstDCS, Conventional rehabilitative treatment
3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

164 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 271 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Pooled it
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  6. Arterial stiffness moderates the link between NfL and cognition: The IGNITE study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025
    Trial
  7. The Impact of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia on Neurofilament Light and Phosphorylated Tau in Individuals with a Concussion.Archives of clinical neuropsychology : the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychologists · 2025
    Trial
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  18. Observational
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104 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.

Christian BarroAnn Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-7795-7383
Tanuja ChitnisAnn Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-9897-4422
Howard L WeinerAnn Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases, Department of Neurology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.ORCID 0000-0003-0203-9681
Brigham and Women's Hospital · US

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Neuronal injury is a universal event that occurs in disease processes that affect both the central and peripheral nervous systems. A blood biomarker linked to neuronal injury would provide a critical measure to understand and treat neurologic diseases. Neurofilament light chain (NfL), a cytoskeletal protein expressed only in neurons, has emerged as such a biomarker. With the ability to quantify neuronal damage in blood, NfL is being applied to a wide range of neurologic conditions to investigate and monitor disease including assessment of treatment efficacy. Blood NfL is not specific for one disease and its release can also be induced by physiological processes. Longitudinal studies in multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injury, and stroke show accumulation of NfL over days followed by elevated levels over months. Therefore, it may be hard to determine with a single measurement when the peak of NfL is reached and when the levels are normalized. Nonetheless, measurement of blood NfL provides a new blood biomarker for neurologic diseases overcoming the invasiveness of CSF sampling that restricted NfL clinical application. In this review, we examine the use of blood NfL as a biologic test for neurologic disease.

Indexed as

BiomarkersCentral Nervous System DiseasesHumansNeurofilament ProteinsBiomarkersneurofilament protein LNeurofilament Proteins

Identifiers

PMID33146954
PMCPMC7732243
OpenAlexW3097365520

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.