Close relatives of intracranial aneurysm patients may have increased risk of condition

International Stroke Conference Late-Breaking News:

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 22 — Genetic analyses provides “modest evidence” that parents, siblings and children of someone with an intracranial aneurysm may be at increased risk of the condition, according to late-breaking science presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2008.

In the “Genome-wide SNP Linkage Screen for Intracranial Aneurysm Susceptibility Genes: Results from 333 Multiplex IA Families” study, researchers sampled 1,895 people from 333 families in which multiple members had ruptured or unruptured intracranial aneurysms.

An intracranial aneurysm is a ballooning out of the weakened wall of a vessel in the brain. If it ruptures, bleeding inside the brain can occur causing a type of stroke known as subarachnoid hemorrhage, which has a high mortality rate.

“Our study provides modest evidence of possible linkage of intracranial aneurysm to several chromosomes,” said Tatiana Foroud, Ph.D., the P. Michael Conneally Professor of Medical & Molecular Genetics, Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Ind.

The researchers performed genome screens on two separate groups of families with intracranial aneurysm.

“Employing smoking as a covariate in the analyses allowed for the detection of an additional genetic locus that appears to have a strong interaction with smoking,” Foroud said.   “Further analyses including subjects with aortic aneurysms detected possible linkage to chromosomes 6 and 11, with the latter replicating a previous study.”

The National Institute of Neurological Diseases funded the study and the Center for Inherited Disease Research (CIDR) provided stroke genotyping services.   CIDR is fully funded through a federal contract from the National Institutes of Health to The Johns Hopkins University, Contract Number N01-HG-65403

Disclosures: None