Stroke is one of the four leading causes of death in most countries and the number one cause of severe neurologic disability causing functional limitations. On average, someone has a stroke every 45 seconds and someone dies of stroke every 3 minutes. The risk of stroke increases with each decade of life.
Achieving an accurate diagnosis quickly in patients with suspected acute stroke is extremely important. Patients with ischemic stroke, even with relatively mild symptoms, may be eligible for intravenous thrombolysis or other means of brain reperfusion if treatment can be started within few hours of symptom onset.
A rapid blood test to confirm a clinical and imaging diagnosis of ischemic stroke (or to aid risk stratification in confirmed cases), based on a simple and low-cost near patient technology, would be extremely useful.
A possible reliable markerof neuronal tissue damage is detection of serum neuron specific enolase (NSE) which can provide early information about neuronal damage.