Recently, at the International Stroke Conference in Honolulu, a new study from Columbia University in the U.S. revealed that the risk of stroke can increase by 40% after suffering from an influenza-like illness. The theory that influenza or influenza-like infections may elevate stroke risk is not new.In 2015, Medical News Today published findings indicating that children with respiratory infections had a sixfold higher risk of stroke within a week compared to others. In 2018, a systematic review of medical records from 762 stroke patients in Scotland, published in The European Respiratory Journal, revealed a significant increase in stroke risk within 28 days of respiratory viral infection.
However, these earlier studies were relatively small in scale. The newly published research represents the largest study of its kind to date. Scientists examined medical records of over 30,000 patients hospitalized for ischemic stroke between 2012 and 2014, identifying cases where patients had been hospitalized for flu-like illnesses within the two years preceding their stroke.They found that within 15 days of experiencing flu-like symptoms, the risk of stroke increased by nearly 40%, with the period of heightened risk lasting up to one year.
Dr. Amelia K. Baum, a principal member of the study, stated: "We initially expected to see differences in the association between influenza and stroke based on urban versus rural settings. However, our findings revealed that this relationship was independent of whether patients resided in rural or urban areas, or whether they were male or female."