Community's Prevalence of Silent Brain Infarction and the Association between Inflammatory Markers, Polymorphisms and Silent Brain Infarction

Asymptomatic Silent brain infarcts (SBI) are frequently found by the images of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a non-invasive imaging technology, in health-like adults, especially of elderly persons. SBI is the possible risk factor of further transient ischemic attack (TIA), stroke, vascular dementia or cognition decline. The prevalence of SBI ranged from 5% in Korea to 30% in USA, varied by races. No data expressed in our country. SBI is a small vessel disease. The pathology is different from large artery disease such as large artery atherosclerostic stroke. However, the associations between SBI and inflammatory biomarkers including C-reactive protein and cytokines, following the traditional cerebral vascular risk factors, are less to study. We aim to explore the role of CRP, TNFα, and IL-6 in the etiology and patho-physiology of SBI. We also aim to study the effect of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) to SBI risk. In NSC 2009-2010 project, we are going to enroll those participants from community. We included at least 1300 subjects from community. In this study, we want to increase the sample size. More administrative units (Li) will be sampled, and around 800 participants will be recruited in the same community. We will collect the basic characteristics from interview, height, weight, waist and hip circumference, blood sample, urine sample and MRI image data. SBI will be identified by neurologist. Expectantly, 2000 subjects will be included. We aim to estimate the age-specific & gender-specific prevalence of SBI of general population, and to investigate the association between SBI and inflammatory markers (CRP, TNFα, and IL-6), and the effects of 6 SNPs, including CRP -3872G/A, CRP-5237A/G, IL-6-1111G/C, IL-6-1510G/C, IL-6-3572G/T, and TNFα-G-308A,to SBI risk.