Hypothermia after cardiac arrest does not affect serum levels of neuron-specific enolase and protein S-100b.

BACKGROUND: We investigated the brain-derived proteins neuron-specific enolase (NSE) and protein S-100b (S-100b) in survivors of cardiac arrest who had either received therapeutic hypothermia (TH) or had not.

METHODS: In a retrospective cohort study, we analysed serum levels of these two proteins over 5 days in 201 adult cardiac arrest survivors admitted to our intensive care unit between 2003 and 2010. These were all survivors that remained comatose and survived at least 48 h. Of these, 140 received therapeutic hypothermia (hypothermia group). The remainder received only standard therapy without hypothermia (normothermia group).

RESULTS: There was no difference in survival between the hypothermia and normothermia groups. At 4 weeks after arrest, 61 (43.6%) patients of the hypothermia group and 26 (42.6%) patients of the normothermia group were still alive with favourable to moderate neurological outcome (Cerebral Performance Category Scale 1-3). We observed no change in the mean serum levels of either protein between the two groups. Within each group, we found significantly higher serum levels of NSE and S-100b in patients with unfavourable neurological outcome (Cerebral Performance Category Scale 4 and 5) than in those with moderate to favourable outcome. Cut-off levels 3 days after cardiac arrest predicting an unfavourable outcome were >40 ng/ml for NSE [specificity 95.2%, Sensitivity 74.1%, areas under the curve (AUC):0.889], false positive rate 4 [confidence interval (CI): 0.0131-0.1175] and >1.03 μg/1 for S-100b (specificity 95.6%, Sensitivity 57.8%, AUC: 0.875) false positive rate 3 (CI: 0.0091-01218).

CONCLUSIONS: Additional application of TH was not associated with significant changes in serum levels of NSE and S-100b in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest, compared to those treated without TH.