A new study observed a 20 percent drop in the risk of stroke among senior adults over the past 20 years. Researchers attributed the decline to efforts aiming to mitigate risk factors such as blood pressure, smoking and statin use.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reviewed the data of an earlier study, then followed 14,357 participants from across the United States to check for hospitalizations and deaths between 1987 and 2011. The participants were aged 45 to 64 years old, and were stroke-free.
During the duration of the study period, seven percent of the participants suffered from stroke. The researchers also looked at their mortality data in which 10 percent died 30 days after suffering from stroke, 21 percent in a year, 40 percent in five years, and 58 percent through 2011. The average number of deaths within 10 years was reduced by eight percent, but this number was seen in those aged 65 and above. The researchers clarified that the improvement was not seen in African American participants.
"We can congratulate ourselves that we are doing well, but stroke is still the number four cause of death in the United States," said study co-author Josef Coresh, MD, PhD, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"This research points out the areas that need improvement. It also reminds us that there are many forces threatening to push stroke rates back up and if we don't address them head-on, our gains may be lost," he added.
While the rate of diabetes continues to grow, other stroke risk factors such as blood pressure, smoking, and statin use showed improvement. The researchers admitted further study is needed to establish the impact of such improvements on the decline of stroke in senior adults. They recommended doctors should focus more on their patients under 65 to prevent the development of stroke.
Stroke remains to be one of the leading causes of death and serious long-term disability in the United States, killing almost 130,000 Americans per year; 610,000 of these are first or new strokes.
Further details of the study were published in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
