Association of primary and secondary hemostasis biomarkers with acute ischemic stroke outcome in patients undergoing thrombectomy, with or without thrombolytics: Post-hoc analysis of the MR CLEAN-NOIV randomized clinical trial.

Background: Intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) using recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (r-tPA) prior to endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) failed to improve treatment effect in acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients compared to EVT alone.

Objectives: We investigated whether primary and secondary hemostasis biomarkers are associated with the effect of IV thrombolytics on clinical and radiological outcomes after EVT.

Patients/methods: In MR CLEAN-NOIV study, AIS patients were randomized to receive IVT plus EVT or EVT alone. We measured hemostatic biomarkers before and 24h post-reperfusion, to determine changes in biomarkers and to determine the association of the biomarkers with short-time stroke severity (National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score), long-term functional outcome (modified Rankin scale (mRS) score), post-EVT extended thrombolysis in cerebral infarction (eTICI) score, and final infarct size.

Results: This substudy included 214 of the 539 AIS patients who underwent IVT+EVT (N=108/266) or EVT alone (N=106/273). In the EVT group, low soluble glycoprotein VI (sGPVI) and high factor (F)VIII levels before treatment were associated with severe NIHSS-score at 24h and poor mRS-score at 90-day post-treatment, respectively. Also in this group, sGPVI levels 24h after treatment were negatively associated with final infarct size. In the IVT+EVT group, high fibrinogen before treatment was associated with good eTICI-score and low ADAMTS13 activity 24h post-treatment was associated with unfavorable mRS-score at 90-day.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that patients with high FVIII and fibrinogen and low sGPVI levels might be most suitable candidates for IVT+EVT, and that patients with low ADAMTS13 activity might be suitable for EVT alone.