Risk of CVT is high in women who use oral contraceptives and at the same time obese.”

Emobileclinic Researchers’ corner

Obesity happens to be highest risk factor in a study of CVT – Cerebral Venous thrombosis; a rare type of stroke which occur 1 in every 100,000 people. Other risk factors are age (40), gender(female), and oral contraceptive . The researchers discovered that the risk of CVT was high in women who use oral contraceptives and at the same time obese. The lead researcher noted that this type of stroke is seen to be common among the young and middle aged people noting that the median was 40 in the study.
This risk was not seen on the normal size women who equally use the oral contraceptives. Obesity with oral contraceptives increased the risk of CVT by 30% in the study says Dr. Jonathan Coutinho ,a neurologist at the Academic Medical Center at University of Amsterdam.

  They studied 186 CVT adults both male and female and the time and nature of their stoke for 14 years. He combined his study with a previous Dutch study of 6000 healthy male and female where the researchers observed the risk factors of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) ( a clothing of blood that occur in the legs and lungs).
With both studies observed, the researchers noted that CVT risk was a bit elevated in obese women who use oral contraceptives. They also noticed that they are more likely to be affected with cancers.
While commenting on the results, the lead author says” it was especially surprising that obesity is only a risk factor in women who use oral contraceptives,” and he equally said the result took them unaware. “We would have expected it to be a risk factor in all patients and perhaps stronger in women on oral contraceptives,” he said.

SOURCE

Jonathan Coutinho etal, M.D., Ph.D., stroke neurologist, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam.
JAMA Neurology