Association between early peripheral blood inflammatory markers and early post-stroke cognitive impairment: a...

To examine whether peripheral blood inflammatory markers differed between patients with and without early post-stroke cognitive impairment and to explore their apparent discriminative ability in this cohort. Clinical characteristics and laboratory data were collected from 118 patients with stroke. A retrospective analysis was conducted using serum inflammatory markers obtained within 24 h after stroke onset and National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores. A logistic regression model was constructed based on these variables, and receiver operating characteristic curves were generated to evaluate their associations with post-stroke cognitive dysfunction. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that NIHSS and SII were significantly associated with PSCI. PLR also showed a statistically significant association in the multivariable model, although the direction of association warrants cautious interpretation. ROC analyses suggested that NIHSS and SII had apparent discriminative ability in this derivation cohort. However, these findings were not internally or externally validated. Higher NIHSS and SII values were associated with early PSCI in this retrospective cohort. These findings are exploratory and require confirmation in larger prospective studies with formal validation.