Cerebral infarction has become one of the leading diseases and a major mortality factor around the world. Atherosclerosis is recognized as one of the important causes of ischemic stroke. Recently, accumulating evidences have indicated that the anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic functions of the HSP70 family play an important role in cerebral ischemia. However, the association between HSP70 SNPs and ischemic stroke was also not well established. We chose 101 cases of cerebral ischemia and 100 healthy people from the Chinese Han population as our study subjects, and PCR-RFLP was employed to analyze HSP70 polymorphisms: HSP70-1+190G/C, HSP70-2+1267A/G and HSP70-hom+2437T/C. There were no significant differences in + 1267A/G allele or genotype frequencies between patients with stroke and healthy controls. However, genotypes of + 190CG and + 2437TT were differentially distributed between the patients and controls. A significant difference of T allele distribution in the HSP70-hom+2437T/C site was observed. Logistic regression analysis indicated that genotypes of + 190CG, + 2437TT and T allele in HSP70-hom were risk factors of ischemic stroke. Moreover, the study has formulated that the interactions between hypertension and + 190CG or + 2437TT may increase the risks of ischemic stroke. The results from this study have suggested a clinical indicator for assessing the possibilities of cerebral stroke, and supply basis to clinicians to give precaution to people who are at risk of stroke. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.