Intracranial Aneurysm Group

Saccular intracranial aneurysm (sIA) and subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH)

Some 2% of population develops saccular intracranial aneurysms (sIAs) at the branching sites of major intracranial extracerebral arteries. Subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) due to rupture of the sIA wall is a devastating form of stroke that affects working-age population.

The sIA disease is complex - it is not known how the acquired and inherited risk factors affect the formation of the sIA pouch and/or the rupture of the sIA wall. Such knowledge would facilitate the development of novel biological methods to identify carriers of the sIA disease and to prevent rupture of the sIA wall.

Our group studies the phenotype, longterm outcome, concomitant diseases, overall disease course, and genetics of sporadic and familial Finnish sIA disease as well as the biology of the sIA wall as a member of the Finnish Intracranial Aneurysm Research Consortium (www.fiarc.fi).

We function at the Kuopio Intracranial Aneurysm Database (www.uef.fi/ns), Clinical Research Institute, University of Eastern Finland (UEF), and Neurosurgery of NeuroCenter, Kuopio University Hospital (KUH), Kuopio, Finland.

As of 2011, the database consists of 2.426 sporadic and 477 familial sIA patients (DNA 1.429) from the Eastern Finnish catchment population of KUH area from 1980 to 2007.

We are highly interested in joining forces with European and other collaborators in the sIA disease genetics and biology. Please contact juha.e.jaaskelainen (at) kuh.fi or +358 44 717 4660.
 

Selected publications on the Finnish sIA disease

• Kurki M, et al. Upregulated signaling pathways in ruptured human saccular intracranial aneurysm wall: an emerging regulative role of Toll like receptor signaling and NF-kappaB, HIF1A and ETS transcription factors. Neurosurgery 2011
• Huttunen T, el al. Long-term excess mortality of 244 familial and 1,502 sporadic one-year survivors of aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage as compared to matched Eastern Finnish catchment population. Neurosurgery 2011
• Huttunen T, et al. Saccular intracranial aneurysm disease: distribution of site, size, and age suggests different etiologies for aneurysm formation and rupture in 316 familial and 1454  sporadic eastern Finnish patients. Neurosurgery 2010
• Yasuno K, et al. Genome-wide association study of intracranial aneurysm identifies three new risk loci. Nat Genet 2010
• Bilguvar K, et al. Susceptibility loci for intracranial aneurysm in European and Japanese populations. Nat Genet 2008
• Helgadottir A, et al. The same sequence variant on 9p21 associates with myocardial infarction, abdominal aortic aneurysm and intracranial aneurysm. Nat Genet 2008
• Frosen J, et al. Growth factor receptor expression and remodelling of saccular cerebral artery aneurysm walls: implications for biological therapy preventing rupture. Neurosurgery 2006
• Tulamo R, et al. Complement activation associates with saccular cerebral artery aneurysm wall degeneration and rupture. Neurosurgery 2006
• Frosen J, et al. Remodelling of saccular cerebral artery aneurysm wall is associated with rupture: histological analysis of 24 unruptured and 42 ruptured cases. Stroke 2004
• van der Voet M, et al. Intracranial aneurysms in Finnish families: confirmation of linkage and refinement of the interval to chromosome 19q13.3. Am J Hum Genet 2004
• Ronkainen A, et al. Risk of harboring an unruptured intracranial aneurysm. Stroke 1998
• Ronkainen A, et al. Familial intracranial aneurysms. Lancet 1997