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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 18|pp 7457—7472

Increased interleukin-18 level contributes to the development and severity of ischemic stroke

Yong Hao1, Jie Ding1, Ronghua Hong1, Shuwei Bai1, Ze Wang1, Chengjun Mo1, Qiang Hu2, Zezhi Li1, Yangtai Guan1
  • 1Department of Neurology, Renji Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
  • 2Department of Psychology, Qiqihar Mental Health Center, Qiqihar, China
Received: June 22, 2019Accepted: September 2, 2019Published: September 16, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102253

Copyright © 2019 Hao et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Although interleukin-18 (IL-18) has been implicated in the pathophysiology of stroke, research findings concerning IL-18 level in stroke have been inconsistent. Thus, we performed a cross-sectional study in patients with first-episode ischemic stroke and then extracted relevant data from databases to validate our results. A total of 252 patients and 259 healthy subjects were recruited, and serum IL-18 level was evaluated in a cross-sectional study. Then, we extracted data and conducted a meta-analysis, including 2,928 patients and 3,739 controls to support our results. A 95% confidence interval for standardized mean difference (SMD) was calculated using a Z test. We found IL-18 was higher in stroke patients than in controls (2.39 ± 0.25 vs. 2.25 ± 0.28, F=8.60, p=0.004) and was negatively associated with the NIHSS scale (r = -0.14, p=0.028). A subsequent meta-analysis confirmed that IL-18 level was higher in stroke patients than in controls (SMD = 2.14, 95% CI = 1.54 ∼ 2.73, P< 0.001). IL-18 level increased with the severity of the stroke (p< 0.01). These findings revealed increased IL-18 level contributed to the development and severity of ischemic stroke, suggesting the potential of this biomarker to become an important reference for the early monitoring of ischemic stroke.