Background Epidemiological studies have reported discrepant findings on the relationship between education level and outcomes after stroke. We aimed to prospectively investigate the relationship between education level and mortality, recurrent stroke, and cardiovascular events in Chinese patients with ischemic stroke. Methods and Results We included 3861 participants from the China Antihypertensive Trial in Acute Ischemic Stroke. Education level was categorized as illiteracy, primary school, middle school, and college. Study outcomes were all-cause mortality, stroke-specific mortality, recurrent stroke, and cardiovascular events within 2 years after ischemic stroke. A meta-analysis was conducted to incorporate the results of the current study and previous other studies on the association of education level with outcomes after stroke. Within 2 years after ischemic stroke, there were 327 (8.5%) all-cause deaths, 264 (6.8%) stroke-specific deaths, 303 (7.9%) recurrent strokes, and 364 (9.4%) cardiovascular events, respectively. The Kaplan-Meier curves showed that patients with the lowest education level had the highest cumulative incidence rates of all-cause mortality, stroke-specific mortality, and cardiovascular events (log-rank P≤0.01). After adjusted for covariates, hazard ratios and 95% CIs of illiteracy versus college education were 2.79 (1.32-5.87) for all-cause mortality, 3.68 (1.51-8.98) for stroke-specific mortality, 2.82 (1.20-6.60) for recurrent stroke, and 3.46 (1.50-7.95) for cardiovascular events. The meta-analysis confirmed the significant association between education status and mortality after stroke (pooled relative risk for lowest versus highest education level, 1.24 [95% CI, 1.05-1.46]). Conclusions Low education level was significantly associated with increased risk of mortality, recurrent stroke, and cardiovascular events after ischemic stroke, independently of established risk factors. Registration URL: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov; Unique identifier: NCT01840072.
Keywords: cardiovascular events; education; ischemic stroke; mortality.