Intracerebral Hemorrhage and SARS-CoV-2: Association or Causation

Ayush Agarwal; Venugopalan Y Vishnu; Deepti Vibha; Rohit Bhatia; Anu Gupta; Animesh Das; M V Padma Srivastava

doi:10.4103/aian.AIAN_362_20

Intracerebral Hemorrhage and SARS-CoV-2: Association or Causation

Ann Indian Acad Neurol. 2020 May-Jun;23(3):261-264. doi: 10.4103/aian.AIAN_362_20. Epub 2020 Jun 5.

Authors

Ayush Agarwal¹, Venugopalan Y Vishnu¹, Deepti Vibha¹, Rohit Bhatia¹, Anu Gupta¹, Animesh Das¹, M V Padma Srivastava¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Neurology, AIIMS, New Delhi, India.

Abstract

Background: Recent respiratory infection including SARS-CoV-2 is an independent risk factor for acute cerebrovascular disease.

Purpose: There have been reports linking haemorrhagic strokes to SARS-CoV-2 infection during this pandemic, which lead us to evaluate if SARS-CoV-2 infection could be associated with increased risk of intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH).

Methods: A retrospective observational study evaluating all stroke cases admitted in our centre in the past one month.

Results: More than half (56%) had ICH, compared to 22% last year. Two patients with ICH were SARS-CoV-2 positive and they had no or mild respiratory symptoms and had higher occurrence of renal dysfunction.

Conclusion: There could be possible association between ICH and SARS-CoV-2 infections. However, a prospective study with larger sample size is needed to elucidate the pathogenesis.

Keywords: Hemorrhage; ICH; SARS-CoV-2; stroke.