Strokes are usually associated with old age, but an increasing number of young and middle aged people are being being affected.
There has been a 25 percent increase in the number of stroke victims worldwide between the ages of 20 and 64 years of age over the past two decades, a University of New Zealand, Auckland, news release reported via the Morning Post Exchange.
If the numbers continue on the same trend, the number of overall disability and death from stroke is predicted to double as soon as the year 2030.
In order to make the conclusion, researchers conducted the "first comprehensive and comparable analysis of the regional and country-specific burden of stroke between 1990 and 2010."
"This is the first study to compare incidence and impacts of stroke between countries on a global scale. Now every country in the world has estimates of their stroke burden, based on the best available evidence. The worldwide stroke burden is growing very fast and there is now an urgent need for culturally acceptable and affordable stroke prevention, management and rehabilitation strategies to be developed and implemented worldwide,"
Through this research, the team found 83,000 people 20 years of age and younger are affected by stokes globally. This would mean 0.5 precent of all stroke victims are in this age demographic.
A second study showed that in 2010 about 61 percent of all stroke-related disability and slightly over half of all deaths were caused by haemorrhagic strokes, which has been linked to unhealthy lifestyles. Most people affected by this deadly type of stroke (which is only half as common as the milder ischaemic stroke) were 75 years of age or younger. They were also more common in lower and middle-income countries.
"Despite some improvements in stroke prevention and management in high-income countries, the growth and [aging] of the global population is leading to a rise in the number of young and old patients with stroke. Urgent preventive measures and acute stroke care should be promoted in low-income and middle-income countries, and the provision of chronic stroke care should be developed worldwide," Maurice Giroud, Agnes Jacquin, and Yannick Béjot from the University of Burgundy said in a comment on the article published in the Lancet.
