Clinical, molecular and cellular study of the obesity paradox in acute ischemic stroke

Abstract

Stroke and obesity are major global health problems. It has recently emerged the concept of “obesity paradox” to describe the finding of improved prognosis in several diseases in patients with excessive body weight. We performed a case-control study comparing the clinical, molecular and cellular characteristics of obese vs. non-obese patients, with ischemic stroke. Obese patients did not show a worse outcome after ischemic stroke, but also seemed to experience a greater recovery of neurological impairments. All this, despite having several factors strongly associated with bad outcome. We found higher values of the IL-10/IL-6 ratio in obese patients, which suggests that obesity may counterbalance the acute inflammatory reaction through an anti-inflammatory stream enhanced in the first moments of stroke. Furthermore, obesity was associated with a greater mobilization of progenitor cells.