Low iron link to stroke risk: Mineral deficiency could contribute to making blood more sticky leading to clots
- Lack of iron increases stickiness of small blood cells called platelets
- When platelets are stickier, they form clumps of red blood cells, or clots
- Clots can form in sensitive areas, such as the brain, causing strokes
Iron supplements may be the answer to the worrying news that a deficiency in the mineral could cause blood clots
Iron deficiency may increase the risk of suffering a stroke by making the blood more sticky, a new study has revealed.
The findings by scientists at Imperial College London could ultimately help with stroke prevention.
Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke, nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled.
The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because the blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots.
In the last few years, several studies have shown that iron deficiency, which affects around two billion people worldwide, may be a risk factor for ischaemic stroke in adults and in children.
The Imperial team found a lack of iron increases the stickiness of small blood cells - called platelets - which initiate blood clotting when they stick together.
The researchers studied a group of patients with a rare disease called hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) that often leads to enlarged blood vessels in the lungs, similar to varicose veins.
Normally, the lungs' blood vessels act as a filter to remove small clots before blood goes into arteries.
In patients with abnormal lung vessels, blood is able to bypass the filter, so small blood clots can travel to the brain.
The patients in the study who were short of iron were more likely to have a stroke.
The researchers also looked at platelets in the lab and found that when they treated these with a substance that triggers clotting, platelets from people with low iron levels clumped together more quickly.
Dr Claire Shovlin, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, said: 'Since platelets in the blood stick together more if you are short of iron, we think this may explain why being short of iron can lead to strokes, though much more research will be needed to prove this link.
Healthy: Normally, red and white blood cells are free to travel through the plasma with ease, in order to reach their required destination
'The next step is to test whether we can reduce high-risk patients' chances of having a stroke by treating their iron deficiency.
'We will be able to look at whether their platelets become less sticky.
'There are many additional steps from a clot blocking a blood vessel to the final stroke developing, so it is still unclear just how important sticky platelets are to the overall process.
Iron deficiency: The blood cells are held together by excess activated platelets that make them sticky, which could form a clot when inside the body
'We would certainly encourage more studies to investigate this link.'
The researchers studied data on 497 patients with abnormal blood vessels in the lung, known as pulmonary arteriovenous malformations, who were treated at a specialist HHT clinic at Hammersmith Hospital in London.
The study found that even moderately low iron levels, around six micromoles per litre, approximately doubled the risk of stroke compared with levels in the middle of the normal range of seven to 27 micromoles per litre.
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