Bereavement over the death a child may increase the risk of a stroke, according to research published in the journal Neurology.
Researchers initiated the study in light of mounting research showing that life-changing events may increase parents’ risk of developing long term health issues.
Dang Wei, MD, MSc, of the department of global public health at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and colleagues wrote:
“Increasing evidence suggests that parents who experience the death of a child have higher risks of morbidity and mortality, including acute myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease, atrial fibrillation, heart failure and cardiovascular death than their unexposed counterparts.
“A recent systematic review suggests that the death of a close family member is associated with an increased risk of stroke; however, the majority of the six studies included in the review focused on spousal bereavement.”
The researchers studies parents who’d had a child recorded in the Danish and Swedish medical birth registers from between 1973 and 2016 and 1973 and 2014.
They also reviewed information on the child’s death and the parents’ stroke and other factors to look for a correlation between the death of a child and the parents’ stroke risk.
Of the 6,711,955 study participants, 128,744 (1.9 per cent) experienced the death of a child and 141,840 (2.1 per cent) had a stroke during follow-up.
The researchers noted that bereaved parents were at an increased risk of stroke and noted that the age of the diseased child did not contribute to the risk.
The researchers also found that the association was stronger if the parent had no other children or had at least three or more children at the time of their child’s passing.
The associations were stronger for parents younger than 50 years old and mothers were more likely to experience haemorrhagic stroke than fathers.
The researchers wrote:
“Our findings are in line with several earlier studies showing a 9 per cent to 140 per cent increased risk of stroke in persons exposed to the death of a spouse, sibling or an unspecified relative.
“Similarly, our results are also comparable to associations reported between other psychosocial factors, such as work stress, anxiety, and depression and the risk of stroke.”
