Stroke doesn’t just affect the elderly. Although most strokes occur following the age of 60, people under the age of 50 can also suffer from them.
Researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center are now investigating which gene variants increase the risk of an ischemic stroke, particularly in people under the age of 60.
Blood group 0 protects
Like yours recently in the trade journal Neurology A published meta-analysis shows that people with blood type A have a 16 percent higher risk of suffering a stroke before the age of 60 than their peers with other blood types. However, the risk of a subsequent stroke was not significantly higher.
In contrast, blood group 0 lowers the early risk of developing the disease by 12 percent. The exact cause is not yet clear, but according to the researchers, one reason might be a tendency to thrombosis. It might result from the changes on the cell surfaces that occur in different blood groups.
“We don’t know why blood type A would carry a higher risk, but it likely has something to do with blood clotting factors, such as platelets and cells that line blood vessels, and other circulating proteins, all of which play a role in the development of blood clots “, neurologist Steven J. Kittner is quoted as saying.
For their study, the “Early Onset Ischemic Stroke Consortium” analyzed the data of almost 17,000 stroke patients and around 600,000 healthy control patients.