ArticleCardiology and cardiovascular medicine2021
Serum Neurofilament Light is elevated in COVID-19 Positive Adults in the ICU and is associated with Co-Morbid Cardiovascular Disease, Neurological Complications, and Acuity of Illness.
Article in Cardiology and cardiovascular medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
- Blood Biomarkers as Prognostic Indicators for Neurological Injury in COVID-19 Patients: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Prognostic performance of blood neurofilament light chain protein in hospitalized COVID-19 patients without major central nervous system manifestations: an individual participant data meta-analysis.Journal of neurology · 2023Pooled it
- Human brain matters: Navigating the neuropathology of COVID-19.Brain pathology (Zurich, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Blood neurofilament light chain and S100B as biomarkers of neurological involvement and functional prognosis in COVID-19: a multicenter study.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2025Observational
- Emerging Trends: Neurofilament Biomarkers in Precision Neurology.Neurochemical research · 2024Review
- Long COVID: plasma levels of neurofilament light chain in mild COVID-19 patients with neurocognitive symptoms.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Article
- Serum neurofilament light chain as a sensitive biomarker for neuromonitoring during extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Blood neurofilament light chain measurements in adults with CNS histiocytic neoplasms.Blood cancer journal · 2024Article
- SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein induces TLR4-mediated long-term cognitive dysfunction recapitulating post-COVID-19 syndrome in mice.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Transient Changes in the Plasma of Astrocytic and Neuronal Injury Biomarkers in COVID-19 Patients without Neurological Syndromes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Serum neurofilament light chain levels in Covid-19 patients without major neurological manifestations.Journal of neurology · 2022Article
- Neurofilament light increases over time in severe COVID-19 and is associated with delirium.Brain communications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
In critically ill COVID-19 patients, the risk of long-term neurological consequences is just beginning to be appreciated. While recent studies have identified that there is an increase in structural injury to the nervous system in critically ill COVID-19 patients, there is little known about the relationship of COVID-19 neurological damage to the systemic inflammatory diseases also observed in COVID-19 patients. The purpose of this pilot observational study was to examine the relationships between serum neurofilament light protein (NfL, a measure of neuronal injury) and co-morbid cardiovascular disease (CVD) and neurological complications in COVID-19 positive patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). In this observational study of one-hundred patients who were admitted to the ICU in Tucson, Arizona between April and August 2020, 89 were positive for COVID-19 (COVID-pos) and 11 was COVID-negative (COVID-neg). A healthy control group (n=8) was examined for comparison. The primary outcomes and measures were subject demographics, serum NfL, presence and extent of CVD, diabetes, sequential organ failure assessment score (SOFA), presence of neurological complications, and blood chemistry panel data. COVID-pos patients in the ICU had significantly higher mean levels of Nfl (229.6 ± 163 pg/ml) compared to COVID-neg ICU patients (19.3 ± 5.6 pg/ml), Welch's t-test, p =.01 and healthy controls (12.3 ± 3.1 pg/ml), Welch's t-test p =.005. Levels of Nfl in COVID-pos ICU patients were significantly higher in patients with concomitant CVD and diabetes (n=35, log Nfl 1.6±.09), and correlated with higher SOFA scores (r=.5, p =.001). These findings suggest that in severe COVID-19 disease, the central neuronal and axonal damage in these patients may be driven, in part, by the level of systemic cardiovascular disease and peripheral inflammation. Understanding the contributions of systemic inflammatory disease to central neurological degeneration in these COVID-19 survivors will be important to the design of interventional therapies to prevent long-term neurological and cognitive dysfunction.
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