A study, led by Dr Dexter Penn and co-authored by Professor Alastair Web, has been selected as one of the most noteworthy pieces of work presented at the European Stroke Organisation Conference (ESOC) 2026, one of the world’s leading gatherings of stroke researchers and clinicians.
The study challenges one of the most widely held assumptions in cardiovascular health: that a low resting heart rate is always a good sign.
The findings
A low resting heart rate is often regarded as a sign of good cardiovascular fitness, observed most commonly in physically active individuals and athletes, whose hearts beat slowly and efficiently.
Analysing data from nearly 460,000 participants in the UK Biobank, followed for an average of 14 years, Dr Penn and colleagues found that stroke risk forms a clear U-shaped pattern across the heart rate spectrum.
Stroke risk was lowest at resting heart rates of 60 to 69 beats per minute (bpm), but increased at both extremes: below 50 bpm and at or above 90 bpm. At these extremes, stroke risk was 25% higher in those with very low heart rates and 45% higher in those with very high heart rates.
- Read the full abstract here.
- Read more: Avoiding the extremes: New research reveals how heart rate shapes stroke risk
About the researchers
Dr Dexter Penn is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Clinical Fellow in Cerebrovascular Disease at Imperial College London. Since qualifying in medicine at the University of the West Indies in 2010, he has built a career spanning neurology, stroke medicine, dementia research, and entrepreneurship, including founding Kalgera, a fintech start-up that raised over £1 million to protect vulnerable people from financial exploitation. Dr Penn is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a Stroke Training Excellence Programme Fellow of the British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians. His PhD research focuses on the epidemiology and underlying physiological mechanisms involved in stroke and vascular cognitive impairment.
Professor Alastair Webb is a Clinical Associate Professor in Stroke Medicine and a Vascular Neurologist at Imperial College London, providing clinical care for acute stroke patients and people with chronic cerebrovascular disease at Charing Cross Hospital. He leads the Imperial Small Vessel Disease Research Group and is the Divisional Director of Research for Medicine and Integrated Care at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, as well as chair of the Scientific Committee of the British and Irish Association of Stroke Physicians.