Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Review Article | OPEN ACCESS

Pathophysiology and Biomarkers in Acute Ischemic Stroke - A Review

Yiwang Guo, Pengyue Li, Qingli Guo, Kexin Shang, Dan Yan, Shouying Du , Yang Lu

Department of TCM Pharmaceutics, School of Chinese Pharmacy, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing 100102, China;

For correspondence:- Shouying Du Email: dushouying@263.net Tel:+861084738615

Received: 17 September 2013 Accepted: 14 November 2013 Published: 24 December 2013

Citation: Guo Y, Li P, Guo Q, Shang K, Yan D, Du S, et al. Pathophysiology and Biomarkers in Acute Ischemic Stroke - A Review. Trop J Pharm Res 2013; 12(6):1097-1105 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v12i6.35

© 2013 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Stroke is one of the major causes of death and disability, including ischemic stroke, which accounts for 85 - 87 % of cases. Currently, there are few treatment options available for minimizing tissue death following a stroke. Emerging data suggest that biomarkers may help improve current clinical outcome of stroke. As such, there is a pressing need to understand the pathophysiology and to explore effective biomarkers following an ischemic brain event. The pathophysiology of ischemic stroke is complex, and majorly involves excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, inflammation, blood-brain barrier dysfunction, apoptosis, etc. Several of the biomarkers are related to these pathophysiologic mechanisms and they may have applications in stroke prediction, diagnosis, assessment, prognosis or treatment. In this review, we summarized the pathophysiology of ischemic stroke and some related biomarkers are examined.

Keywords: Ischemic stroke, Pathophysiology, Biomarker, Clinical outcomes