Participants
This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03577093). We recruited 50 patients with acute ischemic stroke of the anterior circulation from the emergency department of Xuanwu Hospital between March 2016 and December 2017. Ischemic stroke was diagnosed by two neurologists based on the patient’s history, laboratory examination, neurological deficits, and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging results. We included patients with first-time ischemic stroke with a National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score < 25 points who were admitted within 6 hours after symptom onset. We excluded patients with a history of malignant tumour, acute infectious disease, haematologic disease, or renal or liver failure. Moreover, we included 42 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers without central nervous system diseases from the medical examination centre as the control group.