Study identifies new genetic risk factors for stroke

A new genetic study involving more than 520,000 people worldwide has identified a number of genetic risk factors associated with stroke.

An international research consortium has collated data from 29 large studies to carry out the largest genetic study on stroke to date, with European, North and South American, Asian, African, and Australian participants included.

From the millions of genetic variants analysed, 32 independent genomic regions were shown to be associated with stroke, of which 22 were previously unknown. This discovery effectively triples the number of gene regions known to affect stroke risk.

Several of these were shown to overlap with genomic areas known to be implicated in related vascular conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, venous thrombosis or vascular risk factors.

Stephanie Debette, professor of epidemiology and neurologist at the University of Bordeaux, said: "We can't overstate the importance of international collaboration across different ethnic origins when studying genetics of complex, common diseases like stroke. This large-scale collaboration across continents has been a gamechanger."

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