Stroke: The ‘mild’ condition shown to increase your risk of stroke by more than 50%

Miriam tells Loose Women coming out could be linked to mother's stroke

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Published in the journal Nature Medicine, the study looked at the impact of mild-COVID-19 on over 153 thousand American veterans who had mild Covid for at least 30 days after they were first diagnosed.

They were joined by two control groups, one with over five million patients with no evidence of COVID-19 and another pre-dating the pandemic.

Using these two groups, the researchers established what, if any, the long-term impact of mild Covid could be on an individual and therefore the population.

The results found that the risk of stroke rose by 52 percent.

Furthermore, the data also concluded that a case of mild Covid can increase a patient’s risk of a number of conditions including heart failure, heart attack, atrial fibrillation and various arrhythmias (abnormal heart rhythms).

While this list is lengthy it pales in comparison to the degree to which mild Covid increased the likelihood of the conditions.

For example, the risk of a heart attack rose by over 60 percent alongside the risk of heart failure while the risk of abnormal heart rhythms also rose by over 70 percent.

The increase in the probability of these conditions was not limited to one age group, gender, or race, but was present across all fields.

As one of the first major reports into the long-term impacts of COVID-19 with regards to how it can affect the probability of other conditions, this report could send shockwaves through the medicinal community.

While a lot of people have either experienced few or no symptoms from COVID-19, due to gaps in testing many may have had a milder form of the condition that has resulted in the deaths of thousands in the UK.

Officially the government death toll is over 159,000, while the official figure from the ONS is closer to 184,000.

This is greater than the population of Southend-on-Sea.

What this report does is to refocus the light onto Covid as a condition that has to be thought about in the long-term as the UK Government plans to lift the legal requirement to self-isolate if someone has tested positive in the coming weeks.

Although every single nation is slowly learning to live with the notion of living with Covid just as it did with the flu virus in the 20th Century, there is still a degree of uncertainty about to what extent Covid can be lived with.

This report could form part of that discussion and long-term plans for healthcare services as they recover from the pandemic and develop more effective treatments for it.

In the short term, the focus is on economic recovery and the notion of returning to a social normal not seen for nearly two years, a period in which people have continued to suffer from strokes, whose symptoms can be summarised in an acronym “FAST”.

Face – Is the individual’s face drooping to one side, can they smile?

Arms – Can they lift one or both arms?

Speech – Is their speech slurred, are they unable to talk or understand what’s being said despite being conscious?

Time – If a person is experiencing symptoms of a stroke call 999 F.A.S.T..

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