Cerebrovascular accident and essential and toxic metals: cluster analysis and principal component analysis

Background: Cerebrovascular accidents are known as a great cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although there are known risk factors for ischemic stroke, the cases that cannot be justified with these risk factors are increasing. Toxic metals as a potential risk factor for other diseases in humans are assessed in this study in the CVA group and compared to controls.

Method: 70 participants (35 each group) have been selected for this study. The group with recent medical history of documented CVA and a control non-CVA group. The serum level of several metals has been assessed using Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) method. principal components and cluster analyses were employed to compare toxic metal toxicity between the groups.

Results: Cu (p < 0.001) and Pb (p = 0.002) levels were significantly higher in the CVA group whereas Ni (0.003) were significantly lower. There was no significant difference between the smoking (p = 0.56) and opium (p = 0.46) use between these groups. Most of the essential metals were positively correlated with each other in both groups (Ni with Fe, Zn; Fe with Zn with r over 0.6). there was also PCA and CA are crucial in and cluster analysis in which Ni, Fe, and Zn were most similarly correlated in both groups.

Conclusion: we found a complex interaction between toxic metals in the healthy and CVA human body. Due to the lack of data on in vivo interaction of these metals even in healthy individuals, further investigation is needed to evaluate the exact mechanism of such relations.