Inflammatory bowel disease sufferers more likely to experience strokes

By Stephen Beech via SWNS

People with inflammatory bowel disease are more likely to suffer a stroke, according to a new study.

People who suffer from the debilitating condition known as IBD experience chronic inflammation of the intestines.

It includes Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis and unclassified inflammatory bowel disease.

Researchers found that people with IBD were 13 percent more likely to have a stroke up to 25 years after their diagnosis than people who do not have it.

However, the research team emphasized that the study does not prove that IBD causes a stroke.

Study author Dr. Jiangwei Sun, of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, said: “These results show that people with inflammatory bowel disease and their doctors should be aware of this long-term increased risk.

“Screening and management of stroke risk factors may be more urgent in people with IBD.”

The study, published in the journal Neurology, involved 85,006 people with IBD confirmed with a biopsy.

They were each matched with up to five people of the same birth year, sex and county of residence who did not have IBD, for a total of 406,987 people.

During an average follow-up of 12 years, 3,720 of the people with IBD suffered a stroke, compared with 15,599 of the people who did not have it: a rate of 32.6 per 10,000 person years for those with IBD compared to 27.7 among those who did not have it.

When the researchers accounted for other factors that could affect stroke risk, such as heart disease, high blood pressure and obesity, they found that IBD sufferers were 13 percent more likely to have a stroke than other people.

The team found that the increased risk was mainly due to ischemic stroke, which is caused by a blockage of blood flow to the brain, rather than hemorrhagic stroke, caused by bleeding in the brain.

Because both IBD and stroke have some genetic components predisposing people to the disease, the researchers also included in the study the full siblings of the people with IBD. The 101,082 siblings had no history of IBD or stroke at the beginning of the study.

Consistent with the main results, people with IBD had an 11 percent higher risk of stroke than their siblings who didn't have IBD.

Dr. Sun added: “The elevated risk for people with IBD remained even 25 years after they were first diagnosed, corresponding to one additional stroke case for every 93 people with IBD until that point."