02/09/2010

The Neurvascular Laboratory of Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) found some genetic variants that, on the one hand, represent an indicator of response to treatment in ictus as a marker and, secondly, is associated with increased risk for this disease. These results are the fruit of a long history of more than five years during which they have focused efforts in the field of genetics in relation to ictus. The risk factors like hypertension, diabetes, cholesterol and smoking are very important, but we must go further, since these factors do not explain all cases of ictus. Most of these factors do not explain why some patients recover better or worse, why suffer ictus again and others do not, or why some patients respond better to treatment than others. Therefore, we must find new answers. This group of researchers, pioneer and leader in Spain of one of the most fruitful lines of the binomial ictus-genetics, has recently made many advances in this area, that have resulted in several scientific publications (see attachment).