Neues in der schlaganfallprävention: Stellenwert genetischer diagnostik

In industrialized countries, stroke is a leading cause of death. Of those patients that survive a stroke, many will have to cope with long-term disability. In addition to new therapeutic approaches for acute stroke e.g. thrombolysis, several new diagnostic tools were developed for the acute phase as well as primary and secondary stroke prevention. Despite the detection of several modern risk factors for stroke, it has been estimated that up to 50% of the population attributable risk for stroke may be unaccounted for by all known risk factors. Therefore, there was growing interest for genetic investigations and analysis for stroke diagnosis in the recent years. In the following paper we present a short overview on the current status of genetic approaches for stroke diagnosis.