The erythrocyte adhesiveness/aggregation test in the peripheral blood of patients with ischemic brain events

We adopted a simple slide test and image analysis to determine the state of erythrocyte adhesiveness/aggregation in the peripheral blood of 45 patient s with acute ischemic stroke, 30 with TIA and 27 matched controls. A highly significant (P = 0.005) difference was noted between patients and controls regarding the degree of erythrocyte adhesiveness/aggregation while there w as no significant difference for both erythrocyte sedimentation rate or fib rinogen concentrations. We suggest that our slide test might be a low cost and real time method to detect the increased erythrocyte aggregability in t he peripheral blood of patients with acute ischemic neurological events. Th ese findings might be relevant in view of recent studies that suggest a fav orable effect of therapeutic interventions directed at the improvements of this hemorrheological aspect in individuals with ischemic vascular conditio ns.