The Role and Mechanisms of Metabolomics in the Outcome of Acute Ischemic Stroke

Stroke is the most frequent cause of handicap in Taiwan, most patients need rehabilitation for functional recovery. However, some patients recovered poorly even after aggressive rehabilitation. There are numerous proposed prognostic factors of poor recovery after stroke, but there is neither reliable predicting method nor effective treatment. Our study group recruited 16 patients with acute ischemic stroke and 11 controls without a stroke history for the study of plasma metabolomics. We found that the metabolite profiles were significantly different between the patients and controls, between 1 week and 3 months after stroke in the patients, and between the patients with good and poor neurological outcome. Therefore, metabolomics is a potential tool of predicting neurological outcome of ischemic stroke. This proposal plans to recruit 150 patients with acute ischemic stroke and 50 healthy controls to validate the important preliminary results. In addition, we will explore whether the metabolite profiles are different between different stroke etiologies, and find the novel biochemical pathways associated with the outcome and mechanism of ischemic stroke. The findings will help the discovery of novel biomarker and treatment of ischemic stroke.