UK Stroke Forum 2025 | Managing stroke risk after common infections: what clinicians need to know
William Whiteley, BM, BCh, MA, MSc, PhD, FRCP, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK, discusses the risk of stroke after common infections, including COVID-19, influenza, and shingles. Prof. Whiteley notes that vaccination has a powerful effect on reducing this risk and emphasizes the importance of stroke physicians staying up to date with vaccination advice. This interview took place at the UK Stroke Forum (UKSF) 2025 Conference in Aberdeen, UK.
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Transcript
So what we did was we looked at three common infections and looked at the risk of stroke after them. So the most work we did was on COVID-19 and we found that early after infection we roughly can increase the risk of stroke several fold but that falls rapidly with time. For influenza you see a similar increase of early risk which is slightly less than with COVID but again falls with time. For venous events like deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism that risk actually persists for quite some time up to a year...
So what we did was we looked at three common infections and looked at the risk of stroke after them. So the most work we did was on COVID-19 and we found that early after infection we roughly can increase the risk of stroke several fold but that falls rapidly with time. For influenza you see a similar increase of early risk which is slightly less than with COVID but again falls with time. For venous events like deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism that risk actually persists for quite some time up to a year. At the UK Stroke Forum we also reviewed the evidence for shingles and there’s roughly a 70 to 80% increase in the risk of stroke after an episode of shingles, higher earlier on, but lower later. I think the important thing that we did demonstrate in our work on COVID particularly, was that vaccination had a powerful effect on reducing risk. So for stroke physicians in the United Kingdom, it’s really important to keep up to date with the advice given in the green book on vaccination, for COVID-19 vaccination, for influenza vaccination and use of the Shingrix vaccine.
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