There’s new evidence that adults who experience the flu or flu-like symptoms may have a greater risk of stroke. The new study supports earlier research that found similar results in adults and also in children. While those previous studies were smaller, the new research from a team at New York’s Columbia University is the largest of its kind so far.
The link between flu-like symptoms and stroke
For this research, a team looked at the medical records of more than 30,000 people who had been admitted to the hospital for an ischemic stroke. Then they checked to see if any of those people had been hospitalized with flu-like symptoms in the two years prior to the stroke.
They found that there was a nearly 40% greater chance of having a stroke within 15 days of being hospitalized with flu-like symptoms. In addition, the risk for stroke was increased for up to an entire year.
The results were the same regardless of the person’s sex, race or location (rural vs. urban).
The team theorizes that inflammation caused by whatever creates the flu-like infection may be to blame for the higher risk of stroke. But there’s another possible link.
Arterial tears in the flu and neck
Another Columbia University researcher, Madeleine Hunter, and her team looked at 3,861 cases of first nontraumatic cervical artery dissection that took place in New York between 2006 and 2014. This medical condition occurs when an artery in the neck tears its lining, causing the blood flow to become restricted or stop altogether. It’s a risk factor for stroke at any age, but especially in people between ages 15 and 45.
Hunter’s team found that almost 50% of those who had experienced an arterial tear had the flu or flu-like symptoms in the three years before the incident. Even more shocking: the most common time they experienced a flu-like illness was up to one month before the cervical artery dissection.
“Our results suggest that the risk of dissection fades over time after the flu,” explains Hunter. “This trend indicates that flu-like illnesses may indeed trigger dissection.”
