This multiethnic meta-analysis comprising over 20,000 community participants provides noteworthy insight into risk factors for MRI-defined brain infarcts (BI). In clinical practice, MRI-defined BI are commonly seen on brain MRI scans performed for various reasons in older persons. They have been shown to be powerful predictors of incident stroke and incident dementia. Hence, BI represent an important marker for detection of high-risk individuals and initiation of preventive interventions.
Researchers describe the association of MRI-defined BI with vascular risk factors, combining results from the vast majority of previously published population-based cohort studies of BI. They found high blood pressure (BP), both phenotypically expressed high BP and genetically determined risk for high BP, to be the most significant modifiable risk factor for BI. The BI genome-wide association study identified two novel, statistically significant genetic risk loci for BI, FBN2 and LINC00539/ZDHHC20. Further studies on larger samples of patients with MRI-defined BI are required to independently confirm these findings.
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6369905/
Additional information is available on the PubMed website.
PMID: 30651383
