Advances in the genetics of cerebrovascular disease and stroke.

MEDLINE searches identified epidemiologic, experimental, and clinical studies on the genetics of cerebrovascular disease and stroke, including the following topics: genetic epidemiology of stroke; genetics of systemic disorders that cause ischemic stroke, including coagulation disorders, connective tissue disorders, vasculopathies, metabolic disorders, and disorders of unknown etiology; and genetics of systemic disorders that cause hemorrhagic stroke. Recent discoveries in stroke genetics involve the genetic basis of monogenic disorders such as cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy and sickle cell disease. Reproducing similar advances in other forms of cerebrovascular disease and stroke will be more difficult because their inheritance is complex, multigenic, and heterogeneous. However, the future is promising with the application of molecular genetic approaches such as linkage analysis, allele-sharing methods, association studies, and polygenic analysis of experimental crosses as well as the transmission/disequilibrium test--a statistical method for detection of linkage between a marker and a disease-susceptibility locus.