Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group

Reported by: Dr. Venkat S. Karra, Ph.D.

A new proof-of-concept study shows that plasma concentrations of precursor fragments of the neuropeptide enkephalin (proenkephalin A, or PENK-A) are elevated in patients with acute stroke compared with those with TIA and nonischemic events.

Researchers are making efforts to investigate neuropeptides in patients presenting with symptoms of acute cerebrovascular disease.

Although the mature neuropeptides are degraded within minutes, their precursor fragments are much more stable and represent neuropeptide synthesis in stoichiometric relations. “They are therefore well suited as biomarkers and may be suitable for measurement in clinical settings,” said Dr. Doehner.

The precursor neuropeptides proenkephalin A (PENK-A) and protachykinin (PTA) are markers of blood-brain barrier integrity and have been recently discussed in vascular dementia and neuroinflammatory disorders.

Researchers are making efforts to use these precursor fragments as markers to distinguish an ischemic stroke from a transient ischemic attack (TIA) or an intracerebral hemorrhage.

The authors strongly hope that it may help to advance the use of biomarkers in the clinical evaluation of stroke patients.

Despite the limitations, elevated PENK-A levels correlated with stroke severity and with brain lesion size, and they predicted mortality and more functional disability.

“There is clearly an unmet need to establish biomarker-guided prognostic and functional evaluations for patients with stroke, said the lead author Wolfram Doehner, MD, PhD, from the Center for Stroke Research, in Berlin, Germany

The new report was published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1217869

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/768457?src=nldne