Carotid vulnerable plaques are associated with circulating leukocytes in acute ischemic stroke patients: an clinical study based on contrast-enhanced ultrasound

Inflammatory activity plays a central role in the development of carotid rupture-vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques, which is one of the major contributors to acute ischemic stroke. Our objective was to characterize carotid intraplaque neovascularizations (INP) using contrast-enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) and evaluate plaque burden through exploring the relationship between INP and cell count of peripheral leukocytes. Sixty-two patients with large artery atherosclerosis (LAA) were enrolled in this study. CEUS was performed to characterize the carotid artery plaques. The correlations between the CEUS imaging features of carotid plaques and leukocyte counts were investigated. The results showed that the characteristic parameters derived from CEUS, including peak of time-intensity curve (TIC-P), mean of time-intensity curve (TIC-M), peak (FC-P), sharpness (FC-S) and area under the curve (FC-AUC) compared with the control group, were all increased in the stroke group. TIC-P, TIC-M and FC-P were negatively related to lymphocytes, respectively. FC-S and FC-AUC were positively correlated with neutrophils, respectively. Our study indicated carotid INP was closely related to the peripheral leukocytes count. CEUS may serve as a useful tool to predict vulnerability of plaque.