People who are highly stressed have 89 per cent more risk of dying after having a stroke compared to those who feel stress-free, according to a report published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Danish researchers also found that people who said they felt stress on a weekly basis also had a significant increased risk of a fatal stroke compared to those in the least stressed groups.
The link could be due to stressed people having other cardiovascular risk factors, such as being smokers, doing less exercise, being heavy drinkers and having high blood pressure.
There was no significant effect of stress on non-fatal strokes, a report in BBC said.
Researchers in Copenhagen used data from the Copenhagen City Heart Study on 5,600 men and 6,970 women from 1981 to 1983. People were asked how often they felt stressed and how stressed they felt. Stress was defined as the sensation of tension, nervousness, impatience, anxiety or sleeplessness. People were followed for 13 years, the report added.
In that period, 929 had a first stroke, 22 per cent of which were fatal within 28 days. Of the 716 people who reported high stress, 59 had strokes, 18 of them fatal.
Dr Thomas Truelsen said, “Lay people often mention stress as one of the most important risk factors for stroke, often before well-established stroke risk factors such as hypertension and smoking”.
“The scientific literature is inconclusive. Although stress is often mentioned, there is little agreement on what it actually means or how it should be measured. The high stress group can have more severe strokes, a more complicated rehabilitation period, or some unknown biological mechanism may be important”, Truelsen said on BBC.
ANI