A recent study by researchers in the United States and Canada has found that older adults are at greater risk of having a stroke if they experienced their parents divorcing during childhood.

Results of the study were published online in ‘PLOS One’. Among Americans aged 65 and older, one in nine whose parents had divorced reported that they had been diagnosed with a stroke, compared to one in 15 of those whose parents had not divorced during their childhood.

The researchers are from the University of Toronto, Tyndale University both in Canada and the University of Texas at Arlington in the United States.

“Our study indicates that even after taking into account most of the known risk factors associated with stroke—including smoking, physical inactivity, lower income and education, diabetes, depression, and low social support—those whose parents had divorced still had 61 per cent higher odds of having a stroke,” stated the first author Mary Kate Schilke, a university lecturer in the Psychology Department at the Tyndale University.

The strong association found between parental divorce and stroke is similar in magnitude to two other well-established risk factors for stroke: diabetes and depression.