Author: Bolysbek Dana
Editor: Merentsova Anastasia
Symptoms of severe stroke are obvious and well-known: drooping corner of the mouth, weakness in the arm, slurred speech. However, most strokes cannot be accurately diagnosed until advanced hospital radiological tests, such as MRI or computed tomography, have been performed.
It can be more difficult for healthcare professionals such as paramedics, nurses, and doctors to recognize a stroke, especially in patients with less obvious symptoms. Because stroke treatment is time-dependent, it can lead to life-threatening delay in care.
The idea of looking for biomarkers in the blood that is characteristic of brain damage is not new. For years, neurodiagnostic researchers have known that it is possible to identify proteins that are only expressed in the brain, and their detection in the blood may indicate damage to brain tissue.
“But we began to realize that the proteins we were studying as candidates for biomarkers were identified about 20-40 years ago,” O'Connell said. "And it turns out that many of these proteins are not as specific to the brain as we thought, because now we see them expressed in other organs as well, so it might seem like you have a stroke when you don't."
The Francis Payne Bolton team used a specially designed algorithm to assess patterns of gene expression in thousands of brain and other organ tissue samples to identify proteins that could serve as more specific biomarkers of neurological damage. According to O'Connell, the analysis identified up to 50 new potential markers, some of which were subsequently measured and found in the blood of a group of stroke patients.
Source: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-09-scientists-biomarkers-blood-revealing-often-missed.html
