Molecular Genetic Markers of Neuroglia in Traumatic Brain Injury and Their Use for the Functional Assessment of Sportsmen

Abstract

Neuroglia performs multiple important physiological functions, including maintenance of brain homeostasis and metabolism, neuroprotection and modulation of neurotransmission. Studying the role of neuroglia is essential for understanding the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, as well as nervous tissue repair in inflammation or traumatic brain injuries, not infrequent in sports. However, it is difficult to analyze the processes occurring in neuroglial cells because of their high heterogeneity and no system of biomarkers allowing unambiguous assessment of the nervous system’s functional state as a whole. Here we analyze the data on clinically and biologically significant molecular genetic markers of different types of neuroglia and discuss the prospects for their use in sports physiology, including the functional assessment of athletes with TBI of varying severity and other types of sports-related traumas.