KATHMANDU: Younger people who test positive for the virus tend to have stroke risk factors, a study suggests.

For the study, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in the United States, and colleagues analysed COVID-19 patients with stroke from March 20 until April 10 at their institutions.

According to the study published on Thursday, the strokes they observed were unlike what they usually see.

Dr Pascal Jabbour from Thomas Jefferson University was quoted in Science Daily as saying, "We were seeing patients in their 30s, 40s and 50s with massive strokes, the kind that we typically see in patients in their 70s and 80s."

Dr Jabbour is the Chief of the Division of Neurovascular Surgery and Endovascular Surgery in the Vickie & Jack Farber Institute for Neuroscience at the University.

Jabbour further added that although their observations are preliminary and based on observations from 14 patients, what they have observed is worrying. "Young people, who may not know they have the coronavirus, are developing clots that cause major stroke."

The researchers examined 14 patients, of which eight patients were males and six were females. Half of them did not know they had the coronavirus while the remainder were already being treated for other symptoms of the disease when they developed stroke.

Studies have suggested that the coronavirus enters human cells via a very specific access point -- a protein on human cells called ACE2. It has also been revealed that coronavirus latches onto this protein and uses it as a gateway into the cell, where the virus can replicate.

It has been speculated by Dr Jabbour and team that the virus may be interfering with this receptor's normal function, which controls blood flow in the brain, in addition to using it as an entry point to the cell.

Another possibility, according to the researchers, could be that the inflammation of blood vessels causing vasculitis with injury to the cells lining the lumen of the vessel called endothelium is causing micro thrombosis in small vessels.