**Author details**

*Connectivity and Functional Specialization in the Brain*

immune changes occurring after spinal cord injury.

**5. Conclusions**

and difficult to interpret.

the critical therapeutic targets.

**Abbreviations**

SC spinal cord SCI spinal cord injury CNS central nervous system BBB blood–brain barrier

tremendous diagnostic and prognostic value.

injury duration and trauma severity at sampling and the long-term neurological outcome. Thus, after spinal cord injury, the IL-8 level was significantly higher than in the control group of healthy animals but showed a negative correlation with the injury duration. At the same time, the levels of colony-stimulating factors and

The review of publications focused on the problem of SCI-related immune (including cytokine) processes demonstrates that the available data are inconsistent

Both the nervous and the immune systems have essential regulatory functions in the body and are tightly interrelated, while their interaction mechanisms are very diverse. Both local and systemic effects are associated with the neurological and

Along with these general aspects, the SCI-related local and systemic changes in the central nervous system and immune processes should be assessed on a stage-bystage basis [150, 151]. Each phase is characterized by specific prevailing pathogenesis, which is initially linked to the response to injury and targeted at eliminating the damaged cells; then focus moves towards the inflammatory response with the aim of containing the affected area. Finally, a transition from local reactions to systemic processes occurs during later stages; the outcome of the pathological process depends on the efficiency of these phases. Each phase is associated with a specific category of immune response. In this respect, various cell subpopulations characterizing the innate and adaptive immunity or cytokines, the products secreted by

A specific feature of cytokines as markers of pathological changes after spinal cord injury is that they are secreted not only by immune cells but also by cells of the damaged spinal cord. The interaction between the nervous and immune systems can be characterized using the cytokine profile model. It has both theoretical research implications and diagnostic value and provides an opportunity to highlight

Thus, cytokines contribute significantly to the pathogenesis of SCI-related traumatic disease and are responsible for its various manifestations. The cytokines can be secreted by immune cells; however, neurons of the damaged spinal cord are the main source of these biologically active substances. Therefore, the SCI-related cytokine pattern characterizes both the immune and neurological status and has a

these cells, can serve as markers of these immune responses [152, 153].

MCP-1 negatively correlated with the long-term positive outcome.

**12**

Georgii Telegin1 \*, Aleksandr Chernov1 , Alexey Belogurov2 , Irina Balmasova<sup>3</sup> , Nikolai Konovalov4 and Aleksandr Gabibov2

1 Branch of Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Pushchino, Russia

2 Shemyakin and Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

3 Evdokimov Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry of Russia's Ministry of Health, Moscow, Russia

4 N.N. Burdenko National Scientific and Practical Center for Neurosurgery, Russian Federation Health Ministry, Moscow, Russia

\*Address all correspondence to: telegin@bibch.ru

© 2021 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
