Jackson Laboratory researchers identify mouse, human gene associated with stroke, hemorrhage
Date: April 6, 2006
Bar Harbor, Maine - Small-vessel diseases of the brain cause of 20-30 percent of ischemic strokes and an even larger proportion of intracerebral hemorrhages. Less than a year ago, the laboratory of Senior Staff Scientist and Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Simon W. M. John published a paper in the journal Science on their discovery of a gene mutation that leads to cerebral hemorrhaging and a condition known as porencephaly in newborn mice.
The April 6, 2006, New England Journal of Medicine includes a paper by Douglas B. Gould, F. Campbell Phalan, John P. Sundberg, Dr. John, and collaborators in St. Louis, Boston, Amsterdam and Paris, identifying the corresponding human gene. The researchers conclude that people with the mutation of the human gene in question, COL4A1, may be predisposed to hemorrhage and other small-vessel brain conditions, especially after environmental stress.
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