Could vaccines protect kids from stroke, too?

Stroke risk was not increased for children who had an infection 1-6 months previously, indicating that minor infections only increase stroke risk in the short term, according to the authors.

“If our results hold up in further studies, controlling infections like colds and flu through hand-washing and vaccines may be a strategy for preventing stroke in children”, Fullerton stated. Researchers at University of California, San Francisco analyzed medical records of 355 children with a media age of 7.6 years who had stroke and that of 354 children of 9.3 years who did not suffer a stroke. The team observed that in the stroke group, 18 percent of the participants had acquired a kind of infection in the week before the stroke occurred.

Fullerton and her colleagues also observed that routine vaccinations have reduced the risk of childhood stroke. “The infections are acting as a trigger in children who are likely predisposed to stroke”.

The study showed that children with some, a few, or no vaccinations were seven times more likely to have a stroke than those who received most or all of their vaccinations.

Fullerton said that the reason for the definitive link between vaccinations and stroke is not clear. “No matter how we cut the data… vaccines always appear to protect against childhood strokes”. This is six times higher than the risk of children in the comparison group.

The new research conducted by Fullerton and her colleagues is part of a large worldwide case-control study of childhood stroke, called the Vascular Effects of Infection in Pediatric Stroke. Biller and Heyer note that minor infections are common in children.

In stroke, a blood clot blocks blood flow to the brain.

Also, boys and girls that had most or all their procedure imunnizations have been considerably less prone to suffering a attack when compared to boys and girls whom attained just one or two or not vaccines, per the trial, issued on the web September 30 in the document Neurology.

But they should be encouraged to continue with routine infection prevention practices, including the regular pediatric vaccine schedule, he said.

Infants with stroke generally present with seizures, while older infants and school age kids with stroke will have similar symptoms to an adult, including weakness on one side of the body, Fullerton said. “You can’t change a child’s underlying condition, but you can potentially do something about that stroke trigger”.