Pediatric scoliosis predictive blood tests: progress and challenges for clinicians
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Peripheral blood samples for AIS patients, asymptomatic children and control subjects were collected in blood collection tubes containing EDTA and then centrifuged on a Ficoll-Plaque solution to obtain peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and plasma. Gi-coupled receptor signal transduction was measured by cellular dielectric spectroscopy (CDS) in presence of varying concentration of melatonin or other ligands. Plasma concentrations of OPN and sCD44 were measured by ELISA methods adapted to be performed on a robotic platform. In a cross-sectional clinical study, we have shown that mean plasma OPN levels were significantly increased in AIS patients (n=320) and correlated with disease severity with average values of 743±326 and 975±389 ng/ml for moderate and severe spinal deformities, respectively, when compared to the healthy control group (568±216 ng/ml; n=120). Elevated plasma OPN levels were also found in the asymptomatic at-risk group (871±387 ng/ml; n=87), suggesting that these changes precede scoliosis onset. Data obtained using PBMCs revealed a melatonin signaling impairment only in IS patients at different disease stages when compared to healthy controls showing a high specificity (100%) and sensitivity (100%). Risk of developing a scoliosis in asymptomatic children was determined by CDS in 33% of asymptomatic children at risk. Both tests have a unique advantage since they can be performed without any prior knowledge of mutations in any defective genes causing AIS. The standard of care for scoliosis has not changed in any significant manner in decades. Patients today are treated in a substantially similar manner to those twenty or thirty years ago – observation, bracing, and fusion as a last resort. Our diagnostic blood-assay may have the potential to change the way scoliosis patients are diagnosed and treated.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".