In our opinion, these inconsistent findings might derive from the fact that in real clinical practice, neural functional recovery might be affected by various aspects, such as post-stroke care, diet, physical practice, drug administration, etc. Even though prokineticin 2 might affect neural cell survival in the early stage after stroke, the functional recovery reflected by the mRS score in AIS patients would be mainly affected by other conditions after the acute phase of AIS. Here, PROK2 is linked to stroke disorder.