Objective: To explore the changes of the levels of soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1) and basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) in serum of patients with acute cerebral infarction, and the effects of sICAM-1 and bFGF on cerebral infarction.
Methods: ELISA was used to detect the serum sICAM-1 and bFGF of 55 patients with acute cerebral infarction (within 2 days) as well as 32 patients diagnosed as with other neurologic diseases (20 patients with sciatica and 12 with trigeminal neuralgia) and 30 healthy persons as controls.
Results: (1) Both serum sICAM-1 and bFGF in the infarction group were significantly higher [(766.2 +/- 178.8) micro g/L and (17.4 +/- 8.2) micro g/L respectively] than in other disease control group [(529.6 +/- 76.7) micro g/L and (8.3 +/- 2.8) micro g/L respectively] and normal control group [(520.7 +/- 115.9) micro g/L and (5.8 +/- 2.7) micro g/L respectively] (P = 0.000). (2) Correlation analysis showed that there was a positive correlation between the level of serum sICAM-1 and bFGF (r = 0.471, P = 0.000), the level of sICAM-1 was also positively correlated with the number of leukocytes at acute stage (r = 0.285, P = 0.035), and a negative correlation between sICAM-1 and European stroke scale (r = -0.333, P = 0.013) was found. No significant correlation was observed between the level of sICAM-1 and the levels of serum cholesterol (r = -0.042, P = 0.758) or triglyceride (r = 0.061, P = 0.675). (3) Blood pressure seemed to have no influence on the content of sICAM-1 and bFGF after cerebral infarction, while the level of serum bFGF with large infarct size was obviously higher at acute stage.
Conclusion: The levels of sICAM-1 and bFGF increase significantly in the patients with acute cerebral infarction. sICAM-1 and bFGF mayin participate in the pathophysiologic process through inflammatory mechanism. The detection of serum sICAM-1 will be helpful in estimating the clinical severity and the determination of bFGF will be helpful in estimating the size of infarct lesion at acute stage of cerebral infarction.