Carotid Plaque in Ischemic Stroke

The present study recruited 218 patients with ischemic stroke from the Department of Neurology, Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China between November 2015 and March 2017. Their demographic information and clinical characteristics were detailed in our previous publications (14 (link), 15 (link)). All patients had atherosclerotic carotid plaques and the carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) was measured via the examination with a diagnostic ultrasound system (iE ELite, Philips, Franklin, TN, USA). These patients aged 61.2 ± 0.8 years included 127 males and 91 females. A total of 198 healthy subjects aged 61.1 ± 0.8 years were simultaneously recruited as controls from local communities and well-matched for ethnicity, age and sex. The participants who had history of any types of malignant tumors or autoimmune disorders, such as autoimmune thyroid disease, pernicious anemia, multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, celiac disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, and inflammatory bowel disease, were excluded from this study. All eligible participants were of Chinese Han origin and they all gave informed consent to take part in this study as approved by the Ethics Committee of the Second Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China (IRB#: SHJU2017-099), and conformed to the requirements of the declaration of Helsinki.