Childhood arterial ischaemic stroke

amer — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:53:08 +0000

This review of articles and research papers ( Lancet Neurology 2008; 7:425-435) regarding the subject of childhood stroke is useful to both stroke physicians and pediatricians. Amlie-Lefond C et al, mentioned that stroke is increasingly recognised as a cause of childhood disability and lifelong morbidity.
Diagnosis of stroke in children is often delayed owing to low clinical suspicion and the need to exclude the frequent mimics of stroke in childhood. Outcomes are related to presentation, associated illnesses, the underlying cause, size, and location of the infarct, and stroke subtype, but more than a half of the children who have had a stroke will have long-term neurological sequelae. Furthermore, estimates of recurrence rates range from 6–19% in the first few years. Arteriopathy—including arterial dissection and other progressive and non-progressive arteriopathies—might account for up to 80% of childhood stroke in otherwise healthy children. Because children with cerebrovascular abnormalities are at the highest risk of recurrence (66% at 5 years), understanding of the nature and course of these arteriopathies is crucial to the development of secondary stroke prevention strategies.

A genome-wide genotyping study in patients with ischaemic stroke

amer — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:41:30 +0000

Despite evidence of a genetic role in stroke, the identification of common genetic risk factors for this devastating disorder remains problematic. The researchers aimed to identify any common genetic variability exerting a moderate to large effect on risk of ischaemic stroke, and to generate publicly available genome-wide genotype data to facilitate others doing the same (Lancet Neurology 2007; 6:414-420)
The researchers applied a genome-wide high-density single-nucleotide-polymorphism (SNP) genotyping approach to a cohort of samples with and without ischaemic stroke (n=278 and 275, respectively), and did an association analysis adjusted for known confounders in a final cohort of 249 cases and 268 controls. More than 400 000 unique SNPs were assayed.
The authors produced more than 200 million genotypes in 553 unique participants. The raw genotypes of all the controls have been posted publicly in a previous study of Parkinson’s disease. From this effort, results of genotype and allele association tests have been publicly posted for 88% of stroke patients who provided proper consent for public release. Preliminary analysis of these data did not reveal any single locus conferring a large effect on risk for ischaemic stroke.
The data generated here comprise the first phase of a genome-wide association analysis in patients with stroke. Release of phase I results generated in these publicly available samples from each consenting individual makes this dataset a valuable resource for data-mining and augmentation.

Stroke Update » ischaemic stroke

Childhood arterial ischaemic stroke

A genome-wide genotyping study in patients with ischaemic stroke