A low resting heart rate is often seen as a sign of good health, but now, a large study suggests that both very low and very high heart rates may be linked to an increased risk of stroke.
The findings, presented May 6 at the European Stroke Organisation Conference 2026 in Maastricht, Netherlands, are based on data from nearly 460,000 people whose data is included in the UK Biobank, a large repository of health data from U.K. adults. On average, each person was monitored for 14 years, and researchers recorded more than 12,000 cases of stroke among the participants.
