Parental Divorce Hard on Boys with Stroke as Risk Later in Life

Looks like half of the marriages end in divorce. A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that a staggering 3.4 per 1,000 population end in divorce. In such scenarios children are the innocent victims. The entire episode of divorce is tough for children, especially males.

In a study by the researchers from the University of Toronto had revealed that adult children of divorced homes were more likely to have seriously considered suicide than their peers from intact families.  

A current study claims that boys witnessing divorce of their parents are significantly more likely to suffer a stroke at a later stage than men from intact families.

According to the study the adult men who had experienced parental divorce before they turned 18 were three times more likely to suffer a stroke than men whose parents did not divorce. The same was not noticed in girl child/women.

"The strong association we found for males between parental divorce and stroke is extremely concerning," says lead author Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Chair at University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work and Department of Family and Community Medicine.

"It is particularly perplexing in light of the fact we excluded from our study individuals who had been exposed to any form of family violence or parental addictions. We had anticipated that the association between the childhood experience of parental divorce and stroke may have been due to other factors such as riskier health behaviors or lower socioeconomic status among men whose parents had divorced," explains University of Toronto recent graduate and co-author Angela Dalton.

"However, we controlled statistically for most of the known risk factors for stroke, including age, race, income and education, adult health behaviors (smoking, exercise, obesity, and alcohol use) social support, mental health status and health care coverage. Even after these adjustments, parental divorce was still associated with a threefold risk of stroke among males."

Though it is still difficult for the researchers to conclude why men from divorced families had triple the risk of stroke, they assume it could be linked to the body's regulation of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress.

Fuller-Thomson explains the elevated rate of stroke could be linked to a process known as biological embedding. "It is possible that exposure to the stress of parental divorce may have biological implications that change the way these boys react to stress for the rest of their lives," says Fuller-Thomson.

 "If these findings are replicated in other studies," says Fuller Thomson, "then perhaps health professionals will include information on a patient's parental divorce status to improve targeting of stroke prevention education."

The detail of this study is carried in the International Journal of Stroke.