Yes, COVID does increase stroke risk, researchers find
Employers may want to look for ways to identify workers who are at a higher-than-average risk of facing strokes because of COVID and offer them extra screenings.
A new literature review study shows that COVID-19 may lead to a dramatic increase in the risk that people will have strokes.
A team at Unicamp, a university in Brazil, looked at 70 COVID impact studies and found that COVID increased the risk that a patient would have an ischemic stroke, or a stroke caused by a blood vessel blockage, by 76%.
The analysis found that people who had suffered from COVID were about 3.9 times more likely to have a hemorrhagic stroke, or a stroke caused by bleeding, than people who had not had COVID.
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The researchers did not look at mortality by age or work status, but they suggested that, if further research supports their findings, COVID should be considered a new risk factor for stroke.
What it means: Employers may want to look for ways to identify workers who are at a higher-than-average risk of facing strokes because of COVID and offer them extra screenings and help with stroke risk factors that can be controlled, such as high blood pressure and lack of exercise.
Earlier research: Researchers found in an earlier study published in Nature that, within a year after people had overcome COVID, and after adjusting for preexisting conditions, there were about 45 extra cases of strokes or other cardiovascular problems per 1,000 people per year.
An employer’s health plan members could suffer from the effects of failures to get ordinary health screenings as well as from COVID itself.