Background and purpose: Cerebral infarction is thought to be a multifactorial disease that is affected by several environmental factors and genetic variants. Gretarsdottir et al identified a candidate locus (STRK1) for cerebral infarction with a significant logarithm of odds score at 5q12 in whites in 2002 and subsequently identified the PDE4D gene as a susceptibility gene at this locus in 2003. The aims of this haplotype-based case-control study were to confirm, using microsatellite markers and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), whether PDE4D is also a susceptibility gene for cerebral infarction in Japanese subjects.
Methods: Cerebral infarction was defined as noncardiogenic ischemic stroke with signs and symptoms lasting >1 month in duration. We genotyped 208 Japanese cerebral infarction patients and 270 non-cerebral infarction controls for 31 SNPs, 3 dinucleotide microsatellites, and 1 tetranucleotide variable number of tandem repeat. Haplotypes were constructed and their frequencies compared between the cerebral infarction patients and the controls.
Results: The haplotype-based case-control study revealed that in addition to the region of the PDE4D gene (P=0.002), another region (P<0.001) also existed within the STRK1 locus.
Conclusions: The region of the PDE4D gene and the other newly detected region within the STRK1 locus were associated with cerebral infarction.