Introduction: Spontaneous spinal cord infarction (SCI) is a rare debilitating form of ischemic stroke affecting patients of all ages, with an unknown distribution of causes and risk factors (RFs). Cerebral ischemic stroke (CIS) typically affects older patients, but recent studies have shown CIS to be increasing in those 50 or 50, whereas patients with CIS >50 were more likely to have HTN (OR 10.7, 95% CI 2.94–46, p=0.0006) with no age difference for HLD. Trauma (OR 12, 95% CI 1.56–92.3, p=0.02) and aortic dissection (trend, OR 7, 95% CI 0.86–56.9) were more common in SCI (Figure 3). Conclusions: SCI was linked to higher rates of aortopathies and connective tissue disorders in Cosmos, with hematologic RFs (sickle cell disease, DVT, factor V Leiden) tied to SCI only in patients 50 for CIS, younger SCI patients with HTN or HLD had higher odds of SCI than older SCI patients. Subsets of patients with very poorly controlled or early onset vascular risk factors may thus be at increased risk for spontaneous SCI, though further research would be needed to determine this.
Kelly et al. (2026) studied this question.