GMEC Stroke Partnership

Stroke is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. In the UK, 110,000 people suffer a first stroke and 20,000 a Transient Ischaemic Attack (TIA) each year. Stroke outcomes range from complete and rapid recovery to devastating disability and death. Patient outcomes are influenced by multiple factors including biological determinants such as pathology, size of lesion, and likely genetic factors, as well as the kind of treatment provided during the hyperacute phase, i.e. first few hours after onset of a stroke.

One of the obstacles limiting future advances in stroke is the paucity of high quality data from large patient pool which are necessary to investigate the relationship between stroke determinants. Although several centres have the facilities to collect satisfactorily robust data, no one centre has a sufficiently large patient pool to address the important questions and a collaborative strategy between multiple centres would be beneficial. The GMEC Stroke Partnership is working towards connecting some of the best stroke research centres in the UK to create a large patient database of clinical information, linked with an imaging repository and sample biobank. This will enable researchers to analyze relationships between clinical features, stroke subtype, imaging data, biomarkers and treatment outcome.

Combining expertise across centres will enable investigators to address fundamental research questions and improve stroke patient outcome.