Identification of Potential Key Genes Associated with Strokes and its sub types: A Computational Approach  

Background: Despite striking advances in multimodality management, Stroke remains the  third lead cause of adult’s death and disability globally. Identifying novel diagnostic and  prognostic biomarkers is urgently demanded. Study aimed to identify potential key genes  associated with the pathogenesis and prognosis of stroke types including Ischemic Stroke (IS)  and Hemorrhagic stroke (HS) along with IS subtypes. 

Material & Methods: We fetched Human genes using genome assembly build 38 patch  release 13 with known gene symbols through NCBI gene database  (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene). PubMed advanced queries were constructed using  stroke related keywords and associations were calculated using Normalized pointwise mutual  information (nPMI) between each gene symbols and queries. 

Conclusion: A total of 2785 (9.4%) genes were found to be related with the risk of stroke  out. Based on stroke types, 1287 (46.2%) and 375 (13.4%) genes were found to be associated  with the risk of IS and HS respectively. Further stratification of IS based on TOAST  classification, 86 (6.6%) genes were confined to Large artery atherosclerosis; 131 (10.1%)  and 130 (10%) genes were associated with the risk of small vessel disease and  Cardioembolism subtypes of IS. In addition, aprognostic panel of 9 genes signature  consisting of CYP4A11, ALOX5P, NOTCHS, NINJ2, FGB, MTHFR, PDE4D, HDAC9,  ZHFX3 can be treated as diagnostic marker in order to predict individuals who are at the risk  of developing stroke with their subtypes. Our findings would provide some directive  significance for further investigating the diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers to facilitate  the molecular targeting therapy for stroke prevention.