Smoking Tied to Bleeding in the Brain

New study reaffirmed a link between smoking and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), a type of bleeding stroke that occurs under the membrane that covers the brain and is often fatal. The findings of the study are published in the journal Stroke.// Nearly 80,000 twins from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland were studied in 2010. The results suggested that SAH had more to do with external risk factors and very little to do with genetic impact.

The study utilized health care data from the Finnish Twin Cohort, a national database of 32,564 individuals followed for over 42 years between 1976 and 2018. Researchers recognized 120 fatal bleeding stroke events among the twins, and the strongest connection for a fatal brain bleed was found among smokers.

The study also found that heavy and moderate smokers had three times the risk of fatal bleeding in the brain, while light smokers had slightly less at 2.8 times the risk.

"This long-term study in twins helps to prove the link between subarachnoid hemorrhage and smoking," said Rose Marie Robertson, the American Heart Association's deputy chief science and medical officer and co-director of the AHA Tobacco Center for Regulatory Science, who was not involved in the study. "Not smoking or quitting if you've already started, is a vital component of primary prevention."

Source-Medindia