A joint research team led by Professor Lee Hyun of Hanyang University's Department of Medicine announced the results of an analysis on the correlation between tuberculosis and stroke. Professor Lee, Professor Shin Dong-wook of Department of Family Medicine at Samsung Medical Center, and Lee Han-rim, a clinical instructor at the International Healthcare Center, announced that they had tracked tuberculosis patients and non-tuberculosisr patients for 3.8 years on average based on health examination data from the National Health Insurance Service. The result were published in an authoritative stroke journal STROKE’s latest issue on November 28.

The research team compared and analyzed 72,863 people who were confirmed to have tuberculosis in health checkups with the control group of the same number of people between January 2010 and December 2017. As a result, they found out that the risk of cerebral infarction increased by 22% compared to the control group of people.

The results of the study all reflected factors such as obesity, smoking history, drinking history, activity, income, residential area, and accompanying disease index that affect cerebral infarction.

The joint research team assumed that the immune response and inflammation caused by tuberculosis may have burdened the cardiovascular system, increasing the risk of cerebral infarction. In addition, tuberculosis patients tend to increase the number and activity of platelets, which may have led to a hypercoagulable state in which fosters thrombus production is frequent, leading to cerebral infarction.

For this reason, the research team stressed that not only tuberculosis patients or their families but also the medical staff in charge of treatment should be aware of and cope with the risk of stroke.

Professor Lee said, "Tuberculosis experts have thought that after tuberculosis treatment ends, the management of tuberculosis is over. In order to reduce the burden of tuberculosis in the long run, health policies are needed to prevent cardiovascular diseases such as strokes or other complications outside the lungs."