According to new research, your blood type could be linked to your risk of having a stroke before the age of 60.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, included all available data from genetic studies focusing on ischemic strokes.
Study co-principal investigator Dr Steven J. Kittner says: “The number of people with early strokes is rising.
“These people are more likely to die from the life-threatening event, and survivors potentially face decades with disability.
“Despite this, there is little research on the causes of early strokes.”
The research team conducted the study by performing a meta-analysis of 48 studies on genetics and ischemic stroke.
This included 17,000 stroke patients and an estimator 600,000 healthy individuals, who had never experienced a stroke.
They then studied across all collected chromosomes to identify genetic variants tied with stroke.
A link was discovered between early onset stroke occurring before 60 and the space of the chromosome that includes the gene which determines a persons blood type.
The results of the study discovered that individuals who had an early stroke were more likely to have blood type A and less likely to have blood type O, which is the most common blood type.
This is in comparison to individuals who had suffered a late stroke and those who had not experienced a stroke at all.
Both those who had suffered a stroke early and late were also more likely to have blood type B compared to those who had never experienced a stroke.
After adjustments were made for other factors, including gender, researchers found that those with blood type A had a 16 per cent higher risk of having a stroke than other blood types.
On the opposite side of the scale, those with blood type O had a 12 per cent lower risk of having a stroke than the other blood types.
On the study, study co-principal investigator Braxton D. Mitchell says: “Our meta-analysis looked at people’s genetic profiles and found associations between blood type and risk of early-onset stroke.
“The association of blood type with later-onset stroke was much weaker than what we found with early stroke.”
However, the researchers state that the increased risk was very modest and those with blood type A should not worry about having an early-onset stroke or engage with any medical testing because of these results.
Kittner says: “We still don’t know why blood type A would confer a higher risk, but it likely has something to do with blood-clotting factors like platelets and cells that line the blood vessels as well as other circulating proteins, all of which play a role in the development of blood clots.”
Previous studies have suggested that those with blood type A have a slight increased risk of developing blood clots in the legs known as deep vein thrombosis.
Kittner adds: “We clearly need more follow-up studies to clarify the mechanisms of increased stroke risk.”
The study did have some limitations, in the fact that the dat. Was derived from the Early Onset Stroke Consortium, which is a collaboration of 48 different studies across Europe, North America, Japan, Pakistan and Australia.
An estimates 35 per cent of the participants were of non-European ancestry.
