The genetic factors of different ethnic groups and regional disparities in comorbidities play a critical role in influencing the burden of stroke, which has emerged as one of the leading causes of death globally, a study conducted by the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) has reported.
“The underlying genetic factors are very critical in determining and defining the regional variations that influence stroke and its comorbidities which, in turn, can define the burden of stroke,” the study conducted by Moinak Banerjee, a researcher with the Neurobiology Division of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (BRIC-RGCB), noted.
The research, “Ethnic and region-specific genetic risk variants of stroke and its comorbid conditions can define the variations in the burden of stroke and its phenotypic traits”, published in the prestigious biomedical publication eLife, demonstrated that while metabolic risk is the major driver for stroke in America and Europe, it is vascular risk that drives stroke incidence in Asian and African regions.
This is a clear indicator that stroke and its comorbid factors show strong regional disparities and ethnic and region-specific genetic factors. Comorbidities in stroke can amplify the risk of stroke and its outcome.
The findings of the study, one of the largest ever performed globally covering 204 countries, were based on the data collected from 2009-19 for stroke and its major comorbid risk. A total of eleven diseases were studied, and these included overall stroke, its subtypes ischemic stroke (IS), intracranial haemorrhage (ICH), along with its comorbid factors like ischemic heart disease(IHD), diabetes type 1 & type 2, chronic kidney disease, high blood pressure, high body mass index(BMI), and high LDL cholesterol.
Stroke affected over 101 million people worldwide and caused over 6.55 million deaths in 2019, making it one of the leading causes of mortality.
The study can significantly contribute to the prevention and management of the stroke, as it views the disease from population point of view, Director of the RGCB Chandrabhas Narayana says.
The study points out that the majority of public health researchers interpret the burden of stroke from socio-economic perspective while biomedical researchers investigate stroke in isolation.
The study demonstrated that stroke and its comorbid factors show strong regional disparities and that policymakers need to pay attention to these factors when planning programmes to reduce the burden of comorbidities and in turn the burden of stroke.
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