Analysis of glial fibrillary acidic protein in the cerebrospinal fluid of children investigated for encephalopathy.

The clinical application of a newly developed highly sensitive ELISA method (20) to assay glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was investigated in children and adolescents with neurological disorders. GFAP analysis was explored as a tool to differentiate disorders with ongoing astrocytosis. A consecutive series of 34 subjects, 17 boys and 17 girls, with nonprogressive and progressive neurological encephalopathies was compared to 10 healthy controls. The mean CSF GFAP concentration of the controls was 60.6 +/- 54 ng/l (SD). The group of 24 subjects (12 boys and 12 girls) with progressive neurologic disorders had higher mean CSF GFAP levels than the group of 10 subjects (5 boys and 5 girls) with non-progressive disorders, 222.6 +/- 186 and 127.5 +/- 86 ng/l, respectively. The progressive encephalopathies differed significantly from controls (p < 0.01) while the non-progressive did not. The mean GFAP concentration of the epilepsy cases (n = 18) and non-epilepsy cases (n = 16) was 212.9 +/- 196 and 174.0 +/- 132 ng/l, respectively. The epilepsy cases differed significantly from controls which could be explained by the dominance of progressive cases (15 out of 18).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)