Acute ischemic stroke remains a leading cause of mortality and long‑term disability worldwide, imposing a substantial socioeconomic and clinical burden on global healthcare systems. The heterogeneous nature of stroke pathophysiology, involving complex interactions among vascular occlusion, inflammation, oxidative stress, and neuronal damage, presents major challenges for clinical management and outcome prediction. Accurate and timely prognostic evaluation is therefore critical for guiding clinical decision‑making, stratifying patient risk, optimizing therapeutic strategies, and improving long‑term functional outcomes. Reliable prognostic models also support the efficient allocation of limited medical resources, especially in acute stroke care settings where early intervention strongly determines prognosis. Peripheral blood biomarkers offer an accessible, minimally invasive, and cost‑effective strategy for evaluating stroke severity, predicting complications, and estimating neurological recovery. In this narrative review, we summarize current evidence regarding the role of peripheral blood biomarkers in forecasting clinical outcomes in patients with acute ischemic stroke. We focus on key biomarkers related to inflammatory response, oxidative stress, neuronal injury, and hemostatic dysfunction, emphasizing their diagnostic performance and prognostic significance. This review highlights promising peripheral blood indicators with strong potential for clinical translation and routine practice. Our findings contribute to the rapidly advancing field of stroke prognostication, facilitate evidence‑based clinical management, and provide valuable insights for future research toward personalized stroke care and healthcare policy development.
Liu et al. (Fri,) studied this question.