Magnesium, hemostasis, and outcomes in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage

We tested the hypothesis that admission serum magnesium levels are associated with hematoma volume, hematoma growth, and functional outcomes in patients with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).

Patients presenting with spontaneous ICH were enrolled in an observational cohort study that prospectively collected demographic, clinical, laboratory, radiographic, and outcome data. We performed univariate and adjusted multivariate analyses to assess for associations between serum magnesium levels and initial hematoma volume, final hematoma volume, and in-hospital hematoma growth as radiographic measures of hemostasis, and functional outcome measured by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at 3 months.

We included 290 patients for analysis. Admission serum magnesium was 2.0 ± 0.3 mg/dL. Lower admission magnesium levels were associated with larger initial hematoma volumes on univariate (p = 0.02), parsimoniously adjusted (p = 0.002), and fully adjusted models (p = 0.006), as well as greater hematoma growth (p = 0.004, p = 0.005, and p = 0.008, respectively) and larger final hematoma volumes (p = 0.02, p = 0.001, and p = 0.002, respectively). Lower admission magnesium level was associated with worse functional outcomes at 3 months (i.e., higher mRS; odds ratio 0.14, 95% confidence interval 0.03-0.64, p = 0.011) after adjustment for age, admission Glasgow Coma Scale score, initial hematoma volume, time from symptom onset to initial CT, and hematoma growth, with evidence that the effect of magnesium is mediated through hematoma growth.

These data support the hypothesis that magnesium exerts a clinically meaningful influence on hemostasis in patients with ICH.