UK charity The Stroke Association has announced today that it will fund a research study aiming to investigate reports that COVID-19 is causing life-threatening strokes.

The study will build on work conducted by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Data Science Centre at Health Data Research UK (HDR UK).

The research forms part of the CVD-COVID-UK flagship project consortium, which is led by the BHF Data Science Centre at HDR UK.

This consortium aims to understand the relationship between COVID-19 and cardiovascular diseases in the UK population.

The study will use health data from nearly all UK adults, which will allow researchers to follow the health of COVID-19 patients.

As part of the study, data analysts will compare stroke in patients who have tested positive for COVID-19 with patients without the virus, to determine whether or not COVID-19 increases the risk of stroke and to what extent.

The researchers will also analyse stroke risk and characteristics including age, sex, ethnicity and geography to find out which COVID-19 patients are most at risk of stroke.

“Strokes changes lives in an instant and stroke survivors need support to recover, cope and adapt and those with COVID-19 may have additional needs,” said Juliet Bouverie, chief executive of The Stroke Association.

“We need to be prepared with new knowledge about links between COVID-19 and stroke to support people affected by stroke long into the future,” she added.