Multilocus Genetic Risk Score Associates With Ischemic Stroke in Case–Control and Prospective Cohort Studies

• Published in: Stroke (1970) Vol. 45; no. 2; pp. 394 - 402
• Main Authors: Malik, Rainer, Bevan, Steve, Nalls, Michael A., Holliday, Elizabeth G., Devan, William J., Cheng, Yu-Ching, Ibrahim-Verbaas, Carla A., Verhaaren, Benjamin F.J., Bis, Joshua C., Joon, Aron Y., de Stefano, Anita L., Fornage, Myriam, Psaty, Bruce M., Ikram, M. Arfan, Launer, Lenore J., van Duijn, Cornelia M., Sharma, Pankaj, Mitchell, Braxton D., Rosand, Jonathan, Meschia, James F., Levi, Christopher, Rothwell, Peter M., Sudlow, Cathie, Markus, Hugh S., Seshadri, Sudha, Dichgans, Martin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hagerstown, MD Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 01.02.2014
• Subjects: Adult; Aged; Aged, 80 and over; Atrial Fibrillation - complications; Atrial Fibrillation - epidemiology; Biological and medical sciences; Blood Pressure - physiology; Brain Ischemia - epidemiology; Brain Ischemia - genetics; Case-Control Studies; Cohort Studies; Coronary Artery Disease - complications; Coronary Artery Disease - epidemiology; Female; Genetic Predisposition to Disease; Genetic Variation; Genome-Wide Association Study; Headache. Facial pains. Syncopes. Epilepsia. Intracranial hypertension. Brain oedema. Cerebral palsy; Humans; Hypertension - complications; Hypertension - epidemiology; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Multilocus Sequence Typing; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide - genetics; Population; Prospective Studies; Reproducibility of Results; Risk Assessment; Risk Factors; Sex Factors; Stroke - epidemiology; Stroke - genetics; Vascular diseases and vascular malformations of the nervous system; genetic; Cerebral infarction; risk assessment; Stroke; Nervous system diseases; risk factors; Cardiovascular disease; Case control study; Cerebral disorder; Vascular disease; genetics; Central nervous system disease; Risk factor; Brain ischemia; Cerebrovascular disease; Polymorphism; polymorphism, genetic
• ISSN: 0039-2499; 1524-4628; 1524-4628
• DOI: 10.1161/STROKEAHA.113.002938

Genome-wide association studies have revealed multiple common variants associated with known risk factors for ischemic stroke (IS). However, their aggregate effect on risk is uncertain. We aimed to generate a multilocus genetic risk score (GRS) for IS based on genome-wide association studies data from clinical-based samples and to establish its external validity in prospective population-based cohorts. Three thousand five hundred forty-eight clinic-based IS cases and 6399 controls from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium 2 were used for derivation of the GRS. Subjects from the METASTROKE consortium served as a replication sample. The validation sample consisted of 22 751 participants from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology consortium. We selected variants that had reached genome-wide significance in previous association studies on established risk factors for IS. A combined GRS for atrial fibrillation, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and systolic blood pressure significantly associated with IS both in the case-control samples and in the prospective population-based studies. Subjects in the top quintile of the combined GRS had >2-fold increased risk of IS compared with subjects in the lowest quintile. Addition of the combined GRS to a simple model based on sex significantly improved the prediction of IS in the combined clinic-based samples but not in the population-based studies, and there was no significant improvement in net reclassification. A multilocus GRS based on common variants for established cardiovascular risk factors was significantly associated with IS both in clinic-based samples and in the general population. However, the improvement in clinical risk prediction was found to be small.