Publication:

Association between serum lipid and ischaemic stroke in a tertiary hospital in Northern Andhra Pradesh, India

Background The incidence of cerebrovascular disease increases with age and the number of strokes is projected to increase as the elderly population grows. A stroke occurs when blood vessels that carry blood to the brain suddenly blocked or burst, preventing blood flow to the brain. The most common cause of blood vessel blockages is thrombosis (a blood clot) or an embolism (floating clot). Blood clots may form in the arteries that are damaged by atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is an aging process but some factors (risk factor) precipitate it to occur earlier. To find out the risk factors properly are of tremendous importance as risk factor change could directly influence or indirectly affect case fatality by altering the natural history of the disease. Serum lipids are thought to interact with the pathogenesis of stroke through the atherosclerotic mechanism. Objective was to identify the high serum lipid as an independent risk factor of stroke.

Methods This is a hospital-based case-control study. Seventy cases of stroke patients and age, sex-matched 70 healthy control subjects were enrolled by non-random sampling. 12 hours of fasting plasma lipids were estimated in both cases and control subjects. Then it was compared between cases and controls.

Results Hypercholesterolemia was higher in the case group than control but not statistically significant. Mean LDL- cholesterol, and triglycerides were significantly higher in the case group than the control group. The mean value of serum HDL-cholesterol was not significantly lower in the case group than the control group.

Conclusions Serum lipids are significantly higher in ischaemic stroke patients than the control group (LDL cholesterol and triglyceride). So, it may be an independent risk factor of ischemic stroke.