By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, April 3, 2014 (HealthDay News) — People plagued with insomnia might have an increased risk of stroke, particularly if they are young adults, a new, large study from Taiwan suggests.

Over the course of four years, researchers found that insomnia seemed to raise the likelihood that a person will be hospitalized due to stroke by 54 percent.

That risk skyrocketed for people between the ages of 18 and 34, who were eight times more likely to suffer strokes if they had insomnia when compared to their peers who got good sleep, the study found.

“We pay a lot of attention to high blood pressure, to obesity, to issues related to cholesterol. Those are known risk factors,” said Dr. Demetrius Lopes, director of the Interventional Cerebrovascular Center at Rush University in Chicago and a spokesman for the American Heart Association. “But I think what is underrated is if you don’t have a good sleep routine, how much it can harm you, especially at a young age.”

The new study compared randomly selected health records of more than 21,000 people with insomnia and 64,000 without insomnia in Taiwan. None had a previous diagnosis of stroke or sleep apnea.

The findings were published in the May issue of the journal Stroke.

During the four-year follow-up, 583 insomniacs and 962 non-insomniacs were admitted to a hospital for stroke. After accounting for other factors, the researchers concluded that the people with insomnia had an increased stroke risk compared with those who slept well.

Researcher Ya-Wen Hsu, at Chia Nan University, and colleagues also found that the amount of insomnia a person suffers had a direct bearing on their apparent stroke risk.

People who suffered persistent insomnia had a higher risk of stroke than people with intermittent insomnia, and both groups were at greater risk than people whose insomnia stopped during the study.

Insomniacs also tended to suffer more from risk factors that can lead to stroke, including diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

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