Childhood Parental Divorce Experience, 60% Higher Risk of Stroke in Adults
Jan 23, 2025
|
A research team at the University of Toronto in Canada recently published this paper in the international SCI journal 『PLOS ONE" published in the United States.
The research team conducted a study on the association between parental divorce and stroke on 13,205 U.S. adults aged 65 or older.
As a result, those who experienced parental divorce before age 18 were 1.61 times more likely to develop stroke than respondents who did not experience parental divorce. It was analyzed that both men and women have similar risks.
As for these causes, the research team cited mental shock, lifestyle changes, and poor environment.
The research team first estimated that it may be due to chronic stress that interferes with the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, which regulates the body's stress response. If the HPA axis is not controlled, the risk of stroke increases.
In addition, children of divorced parents were more likely to suffer from poverty as children and had a high risk of suffering from persistent sleep disorders even in adulthood.
Dr. Esme Fuller-Thompson, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto, said "It is very concerning that older adults who grew up in divorced families were 60% more likely to have a stroke, even excluding those who suffered physical or sexual abuse when they were young."
However, the research team said, "Most of the study subjects experienced parental divorce in the 1960s and 1970s, and this was a time when divorce was not common." "It seems unreasonable to apply the results of this study as it is because it is different from the current social situation where there are relatively many divorced families." Therefore, more extensive research is needed."
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
