Blood biomarkers in cardioembolic stroke.

One promising field in neurovascular diseases investigation is the use of biomarkers to guide stroke etiology diagnosis and classification. Since treatment differs among etiologic subtypes and nowadays many patients receive a diagnosis of undetermined stroke, biomarkers might become an important additional diagnostic tool. In this review we update current knowledge about biomarkers related with cardioembolic stroke etiology (such as BNP and D-dimer proteins, or PITX2 and ZFHX3 genes), that in the future, might allow rapidly guiding other diagnostic tests and accelerating the onset of an optimal secondary prevention.