Insomnia may be a potential risk factor for a brain bleed from a ruptured aneurysm along with more well known risk factors of smoking and high blood pressure, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an open access journal of the American Heart Association.
More than 3% of adults worldwide have unruptured blood vessel malformations in the brain called intracranial aneurysms, the majority of which will never rupture. About 2.5% of intracranial aneurysms will rupture, resulting in a subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), also called a brain bleed. SAH is a type of stroke that occurs when a blood vessel on the surface of the brain ruptures and bleeds into the space between the brain and the skull.
“Ruptured aneurysms are highly fatal. It is, therefore, extremely important to identify modifiable risk factors that can help prevent aneurysms from rupturing,” said study author Susanna C. Larsson, Ph.D., associate professor in the unit of cardiovascular and nutritional epidemiology at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, and the unit of medical epidemiology at Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden.
The researchers sought to determine whether various factors were associated with intracranial aneurysm and/or the aneurysm rupturing. They studied established risk factors such as smoking and high blood pressure and also assessed the link between aneurysms and coffee consumption, sleep, physical activity, body mass index (BMI), blood glucose levels, type 2 diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, chronic inflammation and kidney function.
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