Novel metabolic biomarkers for the diagnosis of acute ischemic stroke

<b>Aim:</b> To identify novel metabolic biomarkers for patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS). <b>Methods:</b> The metabolites in the sera of 63 patients with AIS aged 45∼77 years and 60 healthy individuals were analyzed by liquid chromatography (LC)-mass spectrometry (MS)/MS. The efficiency of significantly altered metabolites as biomarkers of AIS was evaluated by ROC curve analysis. <b>Results:</b> Different metabolic profiles were revealed in AIS patients' sera compared with healthy persons. Twelve significantly altered metabolites had an area under the curve (AUC) value &gt;0.80, demonstrating their potential as a biomarker of AIS. Among them, six metabolites are firstly reported to distinguish between AIS patients and healthy individuals. <b>Conclusion:</b> These 12 metabolites can be further researched as potential diagnostic biomarkers of AIS. In this study, the serum metabolome of patients with AIS aged 45–77 years were analyzed and the potential biomarkers for AIS diagnosis were identified. Twelve serum compounds were found to be significantly altered and have the ability to distinguish patients with AIS and healthy individuals effectively. Among them, six metabolites were firstly reported to have the potential as biomarkers for AIS diagnosis. These results will contribute to biomarker explorations from blood metabolites to predict AIS in patients from different age groups. Stroke is the second leading cause of death globally and leads to long-term disability and mortality in adults. Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) contributes to most of the incident strokes. However, no blood biomarker has demonstrated optimal sensitivity and specificity for AIS diagnosis up to date. The serum metabolome of 63 patients with AIS and 60 healthy individuals were analyzed by LC-MS/MS in this study. The blood samples were collected from patients with AIS at the early disease stage, prior to surgery and drug treatment. 76 metabolites were identified to be significantly changed (<i>p</i> &lt; 0.05, fold change &gt;1 or &lt;1) in the patients with AIS compared with the healthy individuals. Amino acid metabolites and lipid metabolites were the most altered metabolites in the patients with AIS. The metabolism of alanine, aspartate and glutamate was the most altered pathway in the patients with AIS with the highest impact value. 12 metabolites, including L-glutamic acid, 20α-dihydroprogesterone, 3-(2-Hydroxyphenyl) propanoic acid, L-lactic acid, 6-keto-prostaglandin F1α, 6-hydroxynicotinic acid, desmosterol, 1H-indole-3-acetamide, deoxyinosine, leucodopachrome 1-aminocyclopropanecarboxylic acid and GMP, showed high sensitivity and specificity (AUC &gt;0.80) in distinguishing patients with AIS from healthy individuals. These 12 metabolites can be further researched as potential diagnostic biomarkers of AIS.