We then did a meta-analysis of the genome-wide study-specific analysed datasets to identify novel associations with ischaemic stroke and its subtypes. We did the primary association analyses for all ischaemic stroke and for the three major subtypes: cardioembolic stroke, large-vessel disease, and small-vessel disease. We did additional secondary analyses for young cases (younger than 70 years at first stroke) and for the phenotype of ischaemic stroke in each sex separately. We reused the same controls per centre for all analyses. Excluding the previously published associations, we considered all SNPs reaching suggestive significance (p<5×10−6) for replication. We examined SNPs for heterogeneity across datasets and attempted replication in independent datasets for the loci that were deemed plausible candidates for association with ischaemic stroke.
