People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have a higher risk of stroke than those without the disease, a recent study found.
published in a magazine Neurology, findings outlining that people diagnosed with IBD were 13 percent more likely to suffer a stroke over a 25-year period compared with those without IBD. However, the study does not say that IBD causes strokes, but only points to a possible association.
“These results suggest that people with inflammatory bowel disease and their physicians should be aware of this long-term increased risk,” said study author Jiangwei Sun, PhD, from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. medical express“Screening and management of stroke risk factors may be even more urgent for people with IBD.”
What is Inflammatory Bowel Disease?
IBD is chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. This includes Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. It is characterized by an abnormal immune response to the gut flora of genetically susceptible individuals. According to IBD, symptoms of IBD include bloody diarrhea, tenesmus, and abdominal pain. National Library of Medicine.
As part of the study, the researchers compared their findings from 85,006 people diagnosed with IBD with 406,987 people without IBD, but who were similar in age, sex and location. Over a 12-year period, they found that 3,720 IBD patients had strokes compared with 15,599 non-IBD patients.
This means that people with IBD (32.6 per 10,000 person-years) have a higher rate of stroke than people without IBD (27.7 per 10,000 person-years). The study suggests a potential link between IBD and an increased risk of stroke, but further research is needed to better understand this relationship.
The researchers then assessed other risk factors associated with stroke, such as heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity, and found that people with IBD were 13 percent more likely to have a cardiac event.
In addition to the original participants, the study included 101,082 siblings of patients with IBD who had no previous history of IBD or stroke. Consistent with the main findings, people with IBD were more likely to have a stroke than their siblings without IBD. Overall, those with IBD had an 11 percent higher risk of stroke.
“The high risk of IBD patients persisted even 25 years after they were first diagnosed, equivalent to one additional stroke case for every 93 IBD patients before then,” Sun said.
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Published by Medicaldaily.com