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Shaohua Liao [1; 2] and Chunxia Luo [2] and Bingzhen Cao [3] and Huaiqiang Hu [3] and Suxia Wang [2] and Huili Yue [1] and Lin Chen [2] and Zhenhua Zhou [2]
Academic Editor: Yao Li
1, Department of Neurology, People’s Liberation Army 152 Hospital, Pingdingshan, Henan 467000, China
2, Department of Neurology, Southwest Hospital, Third Military Medical University, Chongqing 400038, China, tmmu.edu.cn
3, Department of Neurology, General Hospital of Jinan Military Region, Jinan, Shandong 250031, China, jnjqzyy.cn
Received May 16, 2017; Accepted Jul 3, 2017
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
In the world, stroke is the second cause of death and the leading cause of adult disability [1]. It is also the fifth cause of death and the leading cause of disabilities among American adults [2], of which 87% is ischemic stroke [3]. Hospitalized patients with ischemic stroke in China have a 3.3–5.2% mortality rate and a 34.5–37.1% death/disability rate 3 months after onset [4–6]. In the pathological process of ischemic stroke, the blood supply is interrupted after cerebral vascular occlusion, together with energy failure, acidosis, excitatory amino acid release, intracellular calcium overload, and generation of free radicals, which eventually lead to brain parenchymal damages composed of necrosis, apoptosis, and autophagy [7–11]. However, the treatment of ischemic stroke is still very limited. Clinical trials on neuroprotective drugs have not been successful [12], and the only FDA-approved treatment of acute stroke is to apply t-PA within 4.5 hours after onset. The emerging intravenous rt-PA thrombolysis prior to intravascular therapy in recent years requires that the femoral artery puncture be performed 120–212.5 minutes after the onset of symptoms [13]. As such, there are only about 2%–5% of stroke patients who meet the criteria for intravenous t-PA with or without bridging therapy due to its narrow therapeutic time window [14, 15]. Most patients still live with varying degrees of neurological dysfunctions. Therefore, a new effective treatment is badly needed to change this situation.
EPCs are regarded as immature endothelial cells which circulate in the peripheral blood. In 1997, Asahara et al. [16] isolated CD34 and Flk1-positive mononuclear cells from the peripheral blood,...