Stroke Patients with Novel Coronavirus Have High Inflammation, Death Rate: Study

Stroke patients who also have COVID-19 revealed increased systemic inflammation, more serious stroke severity, and a much higher rate of death, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal Brain, Behavior & Immunity.// It is a retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study. The study used 60 ischemic stroke patients who were admitted at Birmingham Hospital between late March and early May 2020.

Ischemic stroke occurs when a brain's blood vessel is blocked by a clot, leading to deprived oxygen in some brain tissue. All volunteers were tested for COVID-19 at admission.

"The ratio of neutrophil numbers to lymphocyte number, or the NLR, as estimated from blood count data, is served as an index for the systemic inflammatory response," stated study author Chen Lin from UAB in the US.

"While other researchers have linked NLR with COVID-19 disease severity, refractory disease, and even as an independent factor for death, our study is the first to tie the NLR in patients with COVID-19, ischemic stroke and stroke severity," Lin added.

Out of the 60 patients who were hospitalized with an acute systemic stroke, nine were positive for a COVID-19 infection.

The four major findings of the research are: Patients who were tested positive for COVID-19 exhibited more severe neurological deficit at admission.

Second, All patients with an NIHSS score greater than four, including uninfected patients, had a significantly higher NLR compared to those with lower scores. The NIHSS is utilized to predict lesion size and gauge stroke severity.

Third, patients with COVID-19 had an elevated inflammatory response compared to uninfected patients.

Finally, stroke patients with COVID-19 had a higher death.

"This potentially intimates that the systemic inflammatory response triggered by COVID-19 can cascade from multiple components," Lin noted.

Source-Medindia