Genetic Basis of Stroke in Iran: A Systematic Review and meta-analysis

Stroke has been identified as a prominent cause of death and disability in developed countries. The association of several polymorphisms with stroke in the Iranian population has been documented. However, the overall picture is still unclear. In addition to a thorough literature review about the genetics of stroke, in this study conducted a systematic review to evaluate the association of different genetic markers with stroke risk in Iran. The terms “stroke”, “polymorphism”, “genetic variation”, “association”, “variant”, and “mutation” were searched in both international and Iranian databases. The study was conducted according to the PRISMA Statement, and the articles were reviewed by two authors independently. The third author reviewed the final results. Meta-analysis was performed using MetaGenyo. We found 19 studies evaluating 19 genes and 28 genetic variants associated with developing stroke in the Iranian population. While rs6025 in the multiplicative and recessive models was significantly associated with the stroke risk, rs1799963 did not indicate an association. As many conducted studies were underpowered, there is no clear landscape considering the association between common variations of the candidate genes and stroke in Iran. Furthermore, the lack of efficient data on disease type was the main barrier to investigating final data based on the standard stroke classification. Therefore, these findings need to be replicated and confirmed in well-phenotyped cohorts.