MCAT and ischemic stroke: Mitochondrial genes like MT-ATP6, MT-CYB, MT-ND4, MT-ND5, MT-TR and MT-TT, all associated with CVD in our study, have also been associated with CVD in other ethnic populations, e.g., CAD in Iranians (Heidari et al., 2020), and hypertension and ischaemic stroke in Chinese (Zhu et al., 2016; 2018; Guo et al., 2022).