New blood test for stroke combines blood-based biomarkers with a clinical score

Here is some background to better understand what this is about.

There are two main types of strokes, ischemic and hemorrhagic. In ischemic stroke, the blood supply to the brain is blocked. In hemorrhagic stroke, you have a brain bleed.

One of the subtypes of ischemic stroke, is large vessel occlusion (LVO) where one of the large arteries supplying a large area of the brain is blocked.

This is what this blood test detects, and claims to be able to exclude hemorrhagic stroke.

The way this is usually done is with a CT scan of the brain, preferably CT Angiogram where they inject a special solution into the blood stream which shows up on the CT scan and enables you to visualize the blood vessels directly. This will tell you exactly what type of stroke you have, as well as where the stroke is, and if you have any bleeding, and how big the area that is at risk for damage from the stroke is.

This then gets into treatments.

Focusing again on Large Vessel Occlusions, the two main treatments are clot-busting drugs and thrombectomy. The best-treatment is Thrombectomy, where a neurologist-interventional doctor, threads a thin tube either from the wrist or groin up to the site where the blockage is and mechanically removes the clot (this is similar to what they do for heart attacks).

The other treatment is clot-busting drugs - which work to dissolve clots. They don't work as well as thrombectomy, and can have more side-effects related to bleeding (because they bust all clots everywhere), and can cause brain bleeds. If you give them to someone having a hemorrhagic stroke, that is bad.

Now this test, says it can exclude a hemorrhagic stroke and diagnose a large vessel occlusion. The presumed benefit of this would be for the blood test to be done in the ambulance on the way to the hospital and based on it to administer the clot-busting drugs so they get to work earlier.

That may be helpful in some situations if the person is a long way away from a stroke center, say in a very rural setting. It would, however, be pretty gutsy to administer clot busting drugs without at least a CT Scan, and would need more validation before people would feel comfortable doing it.

The ideal case is not to spend time doing this test, but to get the person quickly to a stroke center where they can get a thrombectomy if needed.

My brother in law just passed from a massive stroke, he was 39. It wasn't a diet issue or life style problem. He had high blood pressure for years and come to find that the artery to his brain was constricted due to his physiology. It's unclear to me if this test would allow for insights to what my brother in law passed from, but the ability to develop diagnostics that could help determine root cause to catastrophic issues could change the world.

This and the work being done to create "digital doubles" that can inform clinical care is something that will change how we experience and receive medical care.

This is a better way to measure anomalies. Today, when something seems off, doctors will try to prescribe medicines which does not get down to the root issue of the problem.

Example: High uric acid? Try some Allopurinol. Not: ‘Hey, let’s check out your kidneys because your bloodwork has similar characteristics of XX.’