Intriguingly, even though both FLTR3 and Ninjurin-2 appear to modulate response to neuronal injury, the Ninjurin-2 SNPs identified in the recently published ischemic stroke GWAS within the CHARGE consortium were not significantly associated with covert MRI-infarcts and the MACROD2 SNPs identified through the present analysis were not associated with overt ischemic stroke. A possible explanation for this discrepancy could be that MRI-infarcts comprise mainly small subcortical infarcts, while ischemic stroke represents a much more heterogeneous entity. Further investigations are needed, beginning with replication of the associations in external cohorts of MRI-defined infarcts, ischemic stroke, and subtypes of ischemic stroke.
