Ischemic strokes are the most common and occur when a blockage in the blood and oxygen supply to the brain is caused by a blood clot.

A new study published by researchers from Bordeaux University suggests that Antidopaminergic antiemetics may alter the flow of blood in the brain, raising the chance of stroke.

Dopamine, which makes us feel good, also makes us feel nauseous. Antidopaminergic antiemetics work by stopping dopamine from working in the brain, which makes us feel sick.

Previous research had linked antipsychotic medications, which function in a similar way, to a higher risk of stroke, so the researchers wanted to see if anti-nausea treatments were the same.

They investigated three forms of medication: domperidone, metopimazine, and metoclopramide.

The investigators looked at data from the French healthcare system and discovered 2,612 patients who had their first ischemic stroke between 2012 and 2016 and were given one of three anti-nausea medicines within 70 days of their stroke.

They then compared these patients to a healthy sample of roughly 22,000 people who hadn’t suffered a stroke but had taken drugs around the same period.

When patients received antidopaminergic antiemetics, researchers took note of how long people took one of the drugs before having a stroke.

The researchers found that the majority of stroke victims had their stroke within 14 days of taking the medicine, according to their findings published in the BMJ.

All three drugs raised the risk of stroke, however, metopimazine had the highest risk (3.6 times greater risk) and metoclopramide had the lowest risk (3.5 times higher risk).

Domperidone, the least inflated of the three anti-nausea medicines, had a risk that was 2.5 times higher.

“The higher risk found for drugs crossing the blood-brain barrier,” according to lead author Anne Bénard-Laribière, “suggests a potential central effect, possibly through an action on cerebral blood flow.”

She did add, though, that more research was needed to understand the exact cause of the elevated stroke risk.

The study was hampered by the fact that the healthcare database did not record the dosage of anti-nausea drugs that patients were prescribed, which could have influenced the stroke risk found.

In the United States, around 795,000 people suffer strokes each year, with 140,000 of them dying – stroke is responsible for roughly one out of every 20 deaths.

Ischaemic stroke accounts for 80% of strokes, with hemorrhagic stroke accounting for the remaining 20%.

Hemorrhagic strokes happen when a blood vessel bursts, flooding portion of the brain with too much blood while depriving other sections of the brain of enough blood flow.

Source: 10.1136/bmj-2021-066192

Image Credit: Getty

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