Evaluation of serum level of homocysteine in patients with ischemic stroke

Stroke is the third most common cause of death in the world. The risk of emerging factors for stroke is plasma homocysteine.
Subjects & A descriptive-analytic study was performed on patients with ischemic stroke referring to Tabriz hospitals. We entered the patient's information, including demographic information of patients, hypertension and etc along with laboratory results of homocysteine assay for patient's blood samples into SPSS v16 statistical analysis program.
A total of100 patients with ischemic stroke were evaluated who their average age was 65.83±15.32 years and also 54.54% were men and 46% were women, 45% were with one risk factor, 50% had hypertension, 13% diabetes, 18% hyperlipidemia, 14% a recent MI history and 31% had smoking history. Overall 74% of patients were with no stroke history, homosystein level in studied patients was 20.40±12.24 mmol/lit and 49% had normal level of homosystein. Homosystein level was evaluated with gender (p=0.876), age (p=0.004) and NIHSS (p=0.745) and also NIHSS level with gender (p=0.058), age (p=0.876), HTN (p=0.070), HLP (p=0.103), DM (p=0.999), and history of MI (p=0.262) and history of CVA (p=0.964), NIHSS level with smoking (p=0.109) and homosystein level (p=0.013). Data analysis showed that the level of homocysteine with hypertension (P=0.021) has a significant relationship.
The results of this study showed that increased homocysteine has a high prevalence in patients with stroke.