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FRIDAY, April 27, 2018 (HealthDay News) — For African-Americans, sickle cell trait (SCT) seems not to be associated with the incidence of ischemic stroke, according to a meta-analysis published online April 23 in JAMA Neurology<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Hyacinth I. Hyacinth, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., from Emory Children’s Center in Atlanta, and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to examine whether SCT is associated with increased risk of incident ischemic stroke among African-Americans. Four prospective population-based studies with African-American cohorts were assessed, including 19,464 individuals (1,520 with SCT, 17,944 without SCT, and 620 with ischemic stroke).<\/p>\n
The researchers found that the distribution of risk factors for ischemic stroke did not differ when they compared participants with versus those without SCT at study visit 1 in each cohort. The crude incidence of ischemic stroke was 2.9 and 3.2 per 1,000 person-years for those with and without SCT, respectively. In the meta-analysis of all four cohorts, the hazard ratio of incident ischemic stroke independently associated with SCT was 0.8 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.47 to 1.35; P = 0.82), after adjustment for stroke risk factors. Similar results were obtained for the individual cohorts.<\/p>\n
“The results of this study suggest performing a more thorough clinical evaluation of a stroke patient with SCT rather than assuming that SCT is the etiologic factor for the stroke,” the authors write.<\/p>\n