The reasons why we found the shortening of the telomeres in SUV39KD cells by contrast to the previously results might be due to the cell types studied, since telomere function was generally aberrantly regulated in cancer cells. Further studies need to address the mechanistic links between G9a, SUV39H1 and chromosomal/telomere structures as well as hTERT expression in cancer cells. It also might be interesting to see whether the individual effects of G9a and SUV39H1 are cooperative when they are both depleted, and whether reintroduction of the two HMTs reverts the phenotype. Nevertheless, targeting these histone methyltransferases could be of therapeutic benefit in cancer treatments. It is not always possible to elucidate the exact cause of elevated TnI an individual patient with AIS, and an ongoing study will try to prospectively determine the frequency and possible etiology of troponin elevation in a large cohort of AIS patients, using coronary angiography. In our study, all patients with known CAD and those with clinical, electrocardiographic and/or echocardiographic findings suggesting myocardial ischemia or acute MI at baseline were excluded, in an effort to eliminate the impact of possible acute MI on short-term outcome of acute stroke. Overall, our findings suggest that regardless of the significant association of high-sensitivity TnI and fibrinogen with short-term functional outcome of AIS, these biomarkers do not significantly improve the excellent predictive ability of the CHA2DS2-VASc score alone. Hence, a 4E1RCat routine measurement of cardiac TnI in patients presenting with AIS does not seem justified unless an ACS is suspected. Given the relatively small size of our study, these findings need further evaluation in larger cohorts with acute ischemic stroke. This was a single centre study performed in a university hospital and our findings might not be fully reflective of a high volume centre setting, Malotilate although a 8.8% in-hospital mortality in our study is comparable to other reports. Nonetheless, our findings should be interpreted with some caution, given the relatively small number of participants in our study.