Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that patients who have two specific gene variants are more than three times as likely to suffer a stroke after heart surgery. Furthermore, since the two implicated genes are involved in the body’s immune response to insult or injury, the researchers said that their findings strongly suggest that inflammation plays an important role in post-operative stroke.The researchers said that if the findings are confirmed by more extensive studies, they could become part of a battery of genetic tests to better identify the risk to patients of stroke after surgery.
