Pre-stroke risk factors influence long-term health
If you had heart disease risk factors, such as high blood pressure, before your first stroke, your risk of suffering subsequent strokes and dementia up to five years later may be higher, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s (AHA) journal Stroke.
“We already know that stroke patients have an increased risk of recurrent stroke and dementia. What we didn’t know was whether this increased risk persists for a long time after stroke and whether heart disease risk factors present before the first stroke influenced the risk of recurrent strokes or dementia,” said M. Arfan Ikram, M.D., Ph.D., senior study author and associate professor, department of epidemiology, neurology and radiology, Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. “Our study found these risk factors influence future stroke and dementia and the risks persist for an extended period in some patients.”