Pregnant women face a much greater risk of having a fatal, but less common, type of stroke caused by bleeding into the brain, according to results of two studies presented by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) at the International Stroke Conference 2019.
Pregnant women face a much greater risk of having a fatal, but less common, type of stroke caused by bleeding into the brain, according to results of two studies presented by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) at the International Stroke Conference 2019.
A study led by senior author Farhaan Vahidy, PhD, MBBS, MPH, found that pregnant women and those who recently gave birth were three to 10 times more likely to suffer intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), which occurs when a blood vessel inside the brain bursts and spills blood into or around the brain. Vahidy is an associate professor of neurology at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth and director of the Population Health & Health Services Research Division at UTHealth Institute for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease.
“It’s important to remember that stroke is uncommon among the younger female population. Women undergo a number of physiological changes while pregnant, so we hypothesized that pregnancy would confer a higher ICH risk,” said first author and presenter Jennifer Meeks, MS, a research coordinator in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School. “However, the scale of the increase was highly significant and strikingly greater than what was anticipated.”
Women with a history of other medical conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes were found to be at a greater risk of ICH. Those who had preeclampsia or eclampsia were 10 times more likely to suffer ICH, according to the study.
Read more at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
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