Acute Ischemic Stroke in Young Immunocompromised Patient With Hypolipidemia

Abstract

Although majority of strokes occur at age over 65, nearly one-fourth of strokes occur in people under age of 65. In 30% of these patients, the cause of stroke remains undetermined and therefore there is a need for discovering rare risk factors like human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The incidence of stroke in young adults lacks the traditional risk factors such as hypertension and diabetes, but HIV-infected patients can manifest with stroke at younger age. Pathogenesis of ischemic stroke in HIV infection is unclear but is postulated to be caused by several possible mechanisms, including opportunistic infection, vasculopathy, cardioembolism, coagulopathy and combination antiretroviral therapies, and so on. Secondary hypolipidemia is common in the setting of chronic infection like HIV and anemia. Low serum cholesterol is a known cause for intracerebral hemorrhage. Hypolipidemia causing ischemic stroke is unknown. We report a unique case of ischemic stroke in young severely immunocompromised patient in the setting of hypolipidemia.




J Med Cases. 2013;4(11):748-752
doi: https://doi.org/10.4021/jmc1513w