Study reports decrease in stroke incidence over last half century

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Stroke incidence in US has gone down over the last 50 years although the severity of stroke has not.
The Framingham Study is a long-running project looking at risk factors and time trends in heart disease and stroke. A new report, involving over 9,000 original participants and their offspring, sheds some interesting light on trends in stroke over the past 50 years. The study covers three separate time periods: 1950-1977, 1978-1989 and 1990-2004. Stroke risk was assessed every two years and occurrence of stroke or death was recorded.

Over the three time periods, lifetime risk of stroke had gone down from 19.5 per cent to 14.5 per cent for men and from 18.0 per cent to 16.1 per cent for women. But stroke severity seemed to stay about the same. Death within 30 days of stroke decreased from 23 per cent to 14 per cent for men but did not decrease for women. The findings show that better control of risk factors may be reducing the overall incidence of stroke. Stroke mortality may be coming down among men compared to women because women are having more severe strokes and at an older age. There is, therefore, an ongoing need for prevention efforts to further reduce stroke incidence, severity, and 30 day mortality.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 27th December 2006 Volume 296 pages 2939-2946

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