Competitive swimmer, 21, had a stroke at graduation – and her doctors suspect it was a rare side effect of the pill

A competitive swimmer suffered a stroke at her graduation, which doctors said was due to the pill.

Marissa Fattore, 21, was graduating from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2013 when she felt a severe headache and a peculiar feeling of confusion in her head.

He put it down to nerves, but collapsed when he returned to his seat.

Mrs Fattore had been an athlete all her life and had never smoked, but she suffered a stroke.

“Things got dark for me, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital,” he said. Business Insider.

Ms Fattore was taken to hospital, where doctors discovered that a blood clot in her brain had triggered a rare type of stroke called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

It occurs when blood clots block the brain’s venous sinuses, which collect pools of blood and help drain the central nervous system, face and scalp. This means that the blood cannot drain.

Ms. Fattore was given blood-thinning and anti-seizure medications to stabilize her, but she was unresponsive during the first 24 hours in the hospital.

‘My family remembers me squeezing their hands or just smiling when they asked me simple questions. “I finally woke up with the doctors around me and I didn’t know how I got there or what had happened,” she said.

Strokes typically affect adults in their 70s, but have increased more rapidly among younger adults (ages 18 to 45) for decades than among those in any other age group. In some hospitals, cases have nearly doubled in just a few years.

Data from the American Heart Association suggests that strokes increased by 43 percent among 18- to 44-year-olds in the U.S. between 2004 and 2018.

Doctors suspected that the estrogen birth control pill Fattore had been taking could have caused the stroke, because they could not find any risk factors or genetic predisposition.

Blood clots are a rare side effect of estrogen-containing birth control. According to the Cleveland Clinic, fewer than 10 out of every 10,000 people a year experience a blood clot due to birth control use.

In contrast, between one and five in 10,000 people develop blood clots each year who do not take hormonal contraceptives.

Ms. Fattore was moved to a physical rehabilitation center after being in the hospital for about a week, where she learned to walk and talk again.

She said: ‘While it was physically exhausting on my body, I think the mental side was harder for me. I just didn’t understand how this could happen to me and I was terrified. I had a great fear of never going back to the way I was before and of having lifelong deficits.’

He left the rehab center a month after arriving there and stopped taking his blood-thinning medication a year later. Mrs. Fattore still has to take seizure medication for life.

Doctors say unhealthy lifestyles and rising obesity rates may be behind the shift toward more strokes in younger people, and obesity increases the risk of weak arteries that can cause blood clots.

But other factors such as excessive alcohol consumption and higher rates of smoking, vaping and even marijuana use among young adults may also be to blame.

The most common form of stroke, called ischemic stroke, which accounts for about 60 percent of cases among young people, is caused by a blockage or clot that blocks blood flow in the brain, causing cells to collapse. They are deprived of oxygen and vital nutrients and begin to function. die.

The other main type of stroke, called a hemorrhagic stroke, occurs when a blood vessel bursts in the brain and begins to leak its contents into the organ.