Association of Osteopontin Gene Polymorphisms With Susceptibility and Prognosis of Ischemic Stroke in Egyptian Patients

The Global Burden of Disease estimated that one person in four aged 25 years will have a stroke in the rest of her/his life. Among them, ischemic stroke (IS) represents 80%.

Stroke is accompanied by a neuroinflammatory response involving immune system. These long-term processes following IS are still far from being understood. So, despite the significant improvement in the diagnosis and treatment of IS, the disability and mortality rate of IS are still rising. An assessment of the prognostic risk of IS should be carried out as early as possible and corresponding interventions should be adopted clinically, in order to have a significant impact on the prognosis of patients with IS.

Predicting the outcome in individual patients solely based on clinical and radiological parameters is challenging for clinicians. Measuring blood biomarkers associated with inflammation, endothelial function, matrix remodeling, and immune functions, may improve prediction performance .

Osteopontin (OPN) is a matricellular protein participating in many physiological and pathologic processes including wound healing, bone turnover, tumor genesis, inflammation, and immune responses . It is well accepted that OPN is an important mediator in stroke pathophysiology. OPN expression is upregulated in microglia surrounding the infarcted area and in microglia and infiltrating macrophages in the infarct area. OPN and microglia seems to exhibit an intimate relationship in stroke with rather beneficial functions for the clinical outcome. However, the role of OPN in stroke-related diseases as atherosclerosis and diabetes should be further disentangled as in this early phase of disease OPN may ultimately culminate in cerebrovascular dysfunction. OPN may exert opposing effects and should be therefore addressed differently.