A stroke is a brain attack, it happens when the blood supply is cut to the brain, it causes brain cells to die and results in brain damage. Recently group of researchers identified a chromosomal region that may contain two genetic variants which could increase risk of ischemic stroke.

Researchers analyzed data collected from 1,544 people who had strokes and 18,058 people who did not. Researchers found that each variant increases the risk of this type of stroke by 30 percent. Statistics revealed that 20 percent of whites and 10 percent of blacks in the United States and Europe have at least one copy of the genetic variant.

Myriam Fornage, co-author of the study and a cardiology professor at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston said: "Basically, the studies were monitoring the development of stroke over time, and we superimposed onto that information the genetic data, which was to look at 2.2 million polymorphisms across the genome in these participants." "We identified two polymorphisms that were located in the same chromosomal region."

Fornage added that we still don't know the actual mutation, [although] we have a good idea that it's the NINJ2 gene, involved in the brain's response to injury. The other gene candidate is WNK1, involved with blood pressure control.

Researchers added more study is needed to known the exact gene.