This technology is a prediction and treatment model evaluating a panel of circulating cytokines and patient demographic information to determine whether an individual will experience significant pain relief following epidural steroid injection (ESI).
Current treatments for lower back pain can be non-surgical or surgical. While generally considered low risk when compared to surgical options and a front line for pain management, spinal injection of epidural steroids (ESI) has received numerous FDA warnings due to rare but serious neurological events, including “loss of vision, stroke, paralysis, and death,” as well as an outbreak of fungal meningitis in 2012 that exposed 13,000 patients and resulted in 64 deaths. Additionally, studies have reported response rates as low as 30% from ESI, further highlighting the need for a screening method to determine which patients will optimally respond to ESI treatment.
This technology presents a model that uses circulating levels of multiple cytokines from blood along with demographic information to predict an individual’s response to non-surgical treatment for lower back pain, such as ESI. Following a minimally invasive blood draw and evaluation of the biomarker panel, an algorithm assesses each of these independent positive and negative variables and demonstrates a highly predictive value. As a result, this technology can help physicians create individual, optimized treatment plans for patients with lower back pain by incorporating the predicted patient response.
The technology has been developed in clinical studies of lower back pain patients (N=55) versus healthy controls (N=57). Corroborating previous studies regarding the low response to ESI, only 23/55 LBP patients (42%) reported pain reduction following ESI treatment with this technology demonstrating a predictive value corresponding to an adjusted R2 of 0.87.
IR CU18325
Licensing Contact: Ron Katz