PRKCH 1425G/A Polymorphism Predicts Recurrence of Ischemic Stroke in a Chinese Population

A recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified a nonsynonymous SNP (1425G/A) in PRKCH which was associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke. The purpose of this study was to examine whether this functional polymorphism is associated with stroke onset and prognosis in a Chinese population. We genotyped PRKCH 1425G/A using Improved Multiple Ligase Detection Reaction in 919 patients with ischemic stroke. Analyses of genotype association with onset and prognosis outcomes were assessed by the Kaplan-Meier method, the log-rank test, and the Cox proportional hazards models. PRKCH 1425G/A was not associated with age of stroke onset (P = 0.323). However, this functional polymorphism was significantly associated with risk of stroke recurrence in recessive models (hazard ratio [HR] = 2.23; 95 % confidential interval [CI], 1.06 to 4.68; P = 0.014), and this effect was more predominant among smokers (HR = 3.67; 95 % CI, 1.47–9.18; P = 0.005). Moreover, the variant genotypes of PRKCH 1425G/A are an independent prognostic factor for ischemic stroke in the final multivariate Cox regression model. Our findings show that PRKCH 1425G/A may be a useful biomarker for predicting the recurrence of ischemic stroke.