Cerebrospinal fluid protein concentrations in children: Age-related valuesin patients without disorders of the central nervous system

Background: The published reference values for cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to tal protein concentrations in children suffer from two major drawbacks: (a) the age-related range often is too broad when applied to the steeply falli ng concentrations in early infancy; and (b) no values have been published f or widely used dry chemistry methods. Methods: We conducted a 2-year retrospective survey of CSF results obtained in a children's hospital with a dry chemistry-based method set up on the V itros 700 analyzer. Results: The data related to ambulatory children up to 16 years of age and term neonates with no clinical or biological signs of brain disease (n = 10 74). Seven age groups with significantly different CSF protein values were identified, and their age-related percentiles (5th, 50th, and 95th) were de termined. On the basis of the upper 95th percentile, from age 0 to 6 months the CSF protein concentrations fell rapidly from 1.08 to 0.40 g/L. A plate au (0.32 g/L) was reached from age 6 months to 10 years, followed by a slig ht increase (0.41 g/L) in the 10-16 years age range. Conclusions: These results imply that CSF total protein concentrations in t he pediatric setting, particularly in infants, must always be interpreted w ith regard to narrow age-related reference values to avoid false-positive r esults. (C) 2000 American Association for Clinical Chemistry.