Associations between Uric Acid Level and 3-Month Functional Outcome in Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients Treated with/without Edaravone.

BACKGROUND

Uric acid (UA), an antioxidant with neuroprotective effects, favorably affects stroke outcome. However, the effect has not been examined in patients treated with edaravone, a frequently used free radical scavenger. We investigated whether the use of edaravone affected the relationship between UA levels and outcome in acute ischemic stroke.

METHODS

We retrospectively evaluated 1,114 consecutive ischemic stroke patients with premorbid modified Rankin Scale (mRS) scores <2 admitted within 24 h of onset (mean, 74 years; median UA levels, 333 μmol/L). We divided the patients into 2 groups using the median UA value as a cutoff, a low UA group (≤333 μmol/L; n = 566) and a high UA group (>333 μmol/L; n = 548), and compared their clinical characteristics and favorable outcomes (mRS <2) at 90 days. We investigated the associations between UA levels and 90-day stroke outcome in patients with and without edaravone treatment.

RESULTS

The high UA group had a higher proportion of men, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and cardioembolic stroke than the low UA group. The high UA group also had a higher proportion of patients with mRS <2 at 90 days (61.5 vs. 54.1%, p = 0.013), but the significance was diminished in multivariate analysis (OR 1.30, 95% CI 0.94-1.71). In subgroup analysis, the high UA group without edaravone exhibited a higher proportion of patients with mRS <2 at 90 days than the low UA group (OR 2.87, 95% CI 1.20-7.16). The high UA group with edaravone did not exhibit this difference.

CONCLUSIONS

In acute ischemic stroke, the favorable association between high UA levels and outcome at 90 days was not evident in patients treated with edaravone.