To estimate the potential clinical utility of HTRA1 methylation as a marker for the early detection of stroke, ROC curve analyses were performed based on the methylation data generated from the prospective nested case–control study using all the analyzed CpG sites and stroke-related variables including age, sex, smoking, drinking, hypertension, diabetes, TC, TG, HDL-C and LDL-C by logistic regression. This evidence concerns the gene HTRA1 and diabetes mellitus.