Men are seeing a decline in stroke risk - but women?

You might have seen postings about the disturbing numbers about younger people having strokes. Now, while stroke risk is declining among some groups, a recent study suggests that stroke risk is declining in men but not women:

The incidence of stroke has declined in recent years, but only in men.

Researchers studied stroke incidence in four periods from 1993 to 2010 in five counties in Ohio and Kentucky. There were 7,710 strokes all together, 57.2 percent of them in women. ...

No one knows why there has been no improvement in women, but the lead author, Dr. Tracy E. Madsen, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Brown, said that some risk factors have a stronger effect in women than in men. Risk factors for stroke include high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and smoking.

Where did your stroke happen? Geography might impact treatment

Photo from David Kessler via Flickr

Last week, the posting was about people born in the "stroke belt" region.

So for a related item, a look at cholesterol-treating drugs seem less likely to be prescribed in the stroke belt, with no statin prescribed for half of stroke survivors:

But inside the so-called Stroke Belt region, seniors were 47% less likely to be discharged on a statin, and men were 31% less likely to get a prescription for the lipid-lowering drugs than women. Neither association was seen outside the Stroke Belt.

"All survivors of ischemic stroke should be evaluated to determine whether they could benefit from a statin, regardless of the patient's age, race, sex, or geographic residence," lead author Karen Albright, PhD, DO, MPH, of the Birmingham VA Medical Center, said in a press release.

Where were you born? If you're from the 'stroke belt,' you might be in danger

Geography if often a key health indicator. Now, a recent study shows that being born in the U.S. "stroke belt" is tied to higher risk of dementia:

For the current study, researchers examined data on 7,423 adults living in Northern California, including 1,166 people born in high stroke-mortality states - all but one in the South: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina and West Virginia.

At age 65, the risk of developing dementia in the next 20 years was 30 percent for people born in these states, compared to 21 percent for those born elsewhere, the study found.