Oral Contraceptives and Nonfatal Stroke in Healthy Young Women

Abstract

Premenopausal women [29] with a diagnosis of stroke were studied. Of these, 14 were otherwise healthy with no known predisposing illnesses. Eleven of the 14 patients were taking oral contraceptives just before admission compared with 7 of 56 otherwise healthy control women (13%). The relative risk estimate for stroke among oral contraceptive users compared with nonusers is 26 (lower 90% 1-sided confidence bound = 7.0). Cigarette smoking was only weakly associated with stroke in this group of women.