Kinetic and inhibitory profiling of serum MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury: neurochemical links to injury…

Cross-sectionalActa neurologica Belgica· Aug 2026

Kinetic and inhibitory profiling of serum MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury: neurochemical links to injury severity and neuroinflammation.

Mustafa Alburhan, Omar Khalid Suhail, Alaa Haleem Imran, Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil

NeurologyCross-sectionalDiagnosisQ3IF 1.3

Serum MMP-9 levels accurately distinguish severe from mild-to-moderate spinal cord injury.

Kinetic and inhibitory profiling of serum MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury: neurochemical links to injury severity and neuroinflammation.

Mustafa Alburhan … Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil

Acta neurologica Belgica · Aug 2026 · Q3 in Neurology

Background

Spinal cord injury (spinal cord injury) is a devastating neurological condition characterized by pronounced neuroinflammation and progressive neurodegeneration.

Purpose

The aims of the study were to examine the enzymatic kinetics of MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury, determine how MMP-9-inhibitor-I inhibits MMP-9, and correlate MMP-9 levels with the severity of injury and neuroinflammatory indicators to explore the inhibitory response of MMP-9 inhibitor-I in vitro and evaluate the potential relevance of MMP-9 as a severity-associated biomarker and experimental inhibitory target in acute spinal cord injury.

Methods

In this cross-sectional study, 160 patients with confirmed acute spinal cord injury were stratified according to the American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale into Mild/Moderate and severe groups.

n = 160 patients

Results

AUC of 1.0 is perfect; 0.942 shows MMP-9 strongly identifies severe injury.

AUC 0.94 (95% CI 0.88 to 1)

null 0

0.88

1

CI excludes the null - significant

More results

MMP-9 levels were significantly elevated in patients with severe spinal cord injury compared with Mild/Moderate injury (p < 0.001) and showed a strong positive correlation with injury severity (r = 0.755, p < 0.001) and positive correlation with creatine kinase-BB levels (r = 0.223, p = 0.047).

More results

MMP-9 remained independently associated with spinal cord injury severity in the adjusted model.

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Conclusion

Enzymatic kinetic analysis suggested higher apparent catalytic activity in severe cases, Inhibition studies showed a kinetic pattern consistent with non-competitive inhibition by MMP-9 inhibitor-I.

Kinetic and inhibitory profiling of serum MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury: neurochemical links to injury severity and neuroinflammation.

Kinetic and inhibitory profiling of serum MMP-9 in acute spinal cord injury: neurochemical links to injury severity and neuroinflammation.

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