The US government has stopped an ongoing stroke prevention research after it was discovered that the therapies suggested in the study were more risky than previously believed.
Researchers from Columbia University were conducting a study to find a method for stroke prevention. They were looking for a treatment to a brain condition called arteriovenous malformation, or AVM that causes these strokes. The condition though rare, involves a tangling of veins and arteries until they burst and cause bleeding in the brain resulting in a stroke. Scientists wondered if detecting this condition through brain scans and providing treatment for them could prevent a stroke.
Columbia University neurologist Dr. Jay Mohr said that early studies revealed it was safest to leave this condition and let it take its own course.
Within three years of this study, three times more people died of strokes after being treated with the study's invasive therapies than people who were given medicine for headaches and other symptoms.
"From what we can see, our current methods of intervention may pose a greater hazard for health than letting the natural history run itself out," Mohr said.
Currently, The National Institutes of Health has stopped taking participants for the study but will continue to monitor people that have already undergone treatment and will see how they fare over time.
According to statistics printed in a report on Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, 800,000 people die in the U.S. each year from cardiovascular disease and strokes out of which 130,000 cases are hemorrhagic strokes.
