Effects of Policosanol on Patients with Ischemic Stroke: A Pilot Open Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Stroke is a major health problem worldwide. Its pharmacological management includes thrombolytic therapy for the acute phase and antiplatelet drugs for stroke recovery and prevention. Statins can help in the acute phase and in preventing stroke in secondary prevention patients. Policosanol is a cholesterol-lowering drug with concomitant antiplatelet effects, with protective effects in stroke models. This observational study investigated the effects of policosanol (20 mg/day) administered during the acute phase and for 5 years later on the neurological recovery of patients with ischemic stroke treated with antiplatelets and vitamins. After hospital discharge, patients were followed up every 3 (first year) and 6 (thereafter) months. Neurological improvement was assessed with the modified Canadian Neurological Scale. Adverse events were recorded. Fifty patients were included; all completed the study. Neurological score improved throughout the study. No patient died, and most [40 (80.0%)] did not experience new vascular events; only one (2.0%) suffered a new stroke, and two (4.0%) suffered more than one transient ischemic attack. The time to the first recurrent event was 46.2 months. Policosanol persistently lowered serum total cholesterol, with such reduction correlating with the neurological improvement (R = 0.995253301). Triglycerides were unchanged. Treatment was well tolerated. Policosanol administered to patients suffering ischemic stroke treated with aspirin and vitamins showed good results on neurological outcomes and recurrent events. This study, however, has limitations, since it was open and uncontrolled, and patients also consumed aspirin and vitamins. New randomized, controlled studies are needed to assess the usefulness of policosanol in stroke management.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".