Excessive sugar intake in a high-glucose environment exacerbates edema formation and worsens neurological prognosis in ischemic stroke (Klug et al., 2021), and the main reason is that the presence of high glucose increases the activity of SGK1, which in turn increases the abundance of Na+-K+-2Cl- cotranslocator proteins and Na+/H+ exchange proteins, thus disrupting the water-salt balance of the blood-brain barrier and exacerbating brain edema. Here, SGK1 is linked to ischemic stroke.