The GIGASTROKE consortium, which is made up of several international consortiums and institutions including the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM) and Hospital del Mar, has led a genomic study of stroke that has detected new genes associated with the disease.
Samples from population databases, hospitals, biobanks and 5 clinical trials have been used for this research. More than 2.5 million patient samples were analyzed (200,000 of whom had suffered a stroke), including the 2,000 provided by the Hospital del Mar. And the results have identified a total of 89 genes associated with the disease, 61 of which were previously unknown.
“This project is the largest on genetics in stroke risk that has been carried out so far and is the result of joining the efforts of the most relevant consortiums worldwide”
Jordi Jiménez Conde (IMIM-Hospital del Mar)
The study is also innovative in that it provides a more global perspective as it is the first time that cross-risk has been analyzed across different populations. Indeed, one third of the samples came from patients of non-European descent (East and South Asia, Africa and Latin America).
This study offers genetic prediction tools, improved and validated for the first time in populations of non-European ancestry, to guide the development of new drugs.
Stroke is responsible for about 12% of deaths worldwide and further study of the genes identified in this research could point to new therapeutic targets for both prevention and treatment of the disease.
Aniket Mishra, Rainer Malik, Tsuyoshi Hachiya, Tuuli Jürgenson, Shinichi Namba, Daniel C. Posner, et al. Stroke genetics informs drug discovery and risk prediction across ancestries, 2022. Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05165-3
