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Amarachi Okeh
A person’s blood type may be linked to the possibility of the person suffering a stroke before 60 years of age, a new study has indicated.
This finding of the study conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal, Neurology.
Speaking on the reason for the research, one of the principal investigators of the study, Steven J. Kittner, MD, MPH, said that the number of people with early strokes is rising and these people are more likely to die from the life-threatening event with survivors potentially facing decades of disability.
He also noted that despite the prevalence of the condition, there is little research on the causes of early strokes.
For the research, data was gotten from genetic studies focused on ischemic strokes, which are caused by a blockage of blood flow to the brain, occurring in younger adults under age 60.
It analysed 48 studies on genetics and ischemic stroke that included 17,000 stroke patients and nearly 600,000 healthy controls who never had experienced a stroke.
According to the report published by Eurekalert, a science peer-reviewed site, the researchers looked across all collected chromosomes to identify genetic variants associated with a stroke and found a link between early-onset stroke – occurring before age 60 – and the area of the chromosome that includes the gene that determines whether a blood type is A, AB, B, or O.
“The study found that people with early stroke were more likely to have blood type A and less likely to have blood type O (the most common blood type) – compared to people with late stroke and people who never had a stroke.
“Both early and late strokes were also more likely to have blood type B compared to controls. After adjusting for sex and other factors, researchers found those who had blood type A had a 16 percent higher risk of having an early stroke than people with other blood types.
“Those who had blood type O had a 12 per cent lower risk of having a stroke than people with other blood types.
Speaking on this finding, another study co-principal investigator, Braxton D. Mitchell, PhD, MPH, Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine said, “our meta-analysis looked at people’s genetic profiles and found associations between blood type and risk of early-onset stroke.
“The association of blood type with later-onset stroke was much weaker than what we found with early stroke.”
The researchers however stressed that the increased risk was very modest and that those with type A blood should not worry about having an early-onset stroke or engage in extra screening or medical testing based on this finding.
“We still don’t know why blood type A would confer a higher risk, but it likely has something to do with blood-clotting factors like platelets and cells that line the blood vessels as well as other circulating proteins, all of which play a role in the development of blood clots,” said Dr. Kittner.
“We clearly need more follow-up studies to clarify the mechanisms of increased stroke risk,” he added.
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