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INSURANCE GROUP USA NEWS
Strokes Among Middle-Aged Women Triple
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
AP Medical Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Strokes have tripled in recent years among
middle-aged women in the U.S., an alarming trend doctors blame on
the obesity epidemic. Nearly 2 percent of women ages 35 to 54
reported suffering a stroke in the most recent federal health
survey, from 1999 to 2004. Only about half a percent did in the
previous survey, from 1988 to 1994.
The percentage is small because most strokes occur in older
people. But the sudden spike in middle age and the reasons behind
it are ominous, doctors said in research presented Wednesday at a
medical conference.
It happened even though more women in the recent survey were on
medicines to control their cholesterol and blood pressure - steps
that lower the risk of stroke.
Women's waistlines are nearly two inches bigger than they were a
decade earlier, and that bulge corresponds with the increase in
strokes, researchers said.
In addition, women's average body mass index, a commonly used
measure of obesity, rose from 27 in the earlier survey to 29. They
also had higher blood sugar levels.
No other traditional risk factors like smoking, heart disease or
diabetes changed enough between the two surveys to account for the
increase in strokes.
In a "pre-stroke population" of middle-age women, a tripling of
cases is "an alarming increase," said Dr. Ralph Sacco, neurology
chief at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.
The study was led by Dr. Amytis Towfighi, a neurology specialist
at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and
presented at the International Stroke Conference in New Orleans.
She used the National Health and Nutrition Surveys, a federally
funded project that gives periodic health checkups and
questionnaires to a wide sample of Americans. Participants are
routinely asked whether a doctor had ever told them they had had a
stroke, and about 5,000 middle-aged people answered that question
in each survey.
Researchers saw that the stroke rate had spiked in middle-aged
women but stayed about the same - around 1 percent - in
middle-aged men. So they looked deeper at the responses to see if
they could learn why.
Belly fat stood out, Towfighi said. The portion of women with
abdominal obesity rose from 47 percent in the earlier survey to 59
percent in the recent one. The change in men was smaller, and
previous studies have shown that "abdominal obesity is a stronger
risk factor for women than men," she said.
Men traditionally have had a greater risk of stroke than women,
and "women start catching up to men five or 10 years after
menopause," said Dr. Philip Gorelick, neurology chief at the
University of Illinois in Chicago and chairman of the stroke
conference.
The new research means "we need to redefine our textbooks about
stroke in women," because they may now be more at risk in middle
age than men.
Obesity "sets the stage for all the other risk factors to come in"
like diabetes and heart disease, Gorelick added.
In other news at the conference, two studies found that stroke
patients were more likely to die if they went to hospitals on
nights or weekends, echoing other recent studies that found
similar risks for heart attack and surgery patients.
Michigan State University doctors analyzed 222,500 stroke cases at
more than 850 hospitals participating in an American Heart
Association quality improvement program from 2003 to 2007.
In-hospital deaths were about 6 percent for those who arrived
during normal business hours and had strokes caused by a clot,
compared with 5 percent of those who entered the hospital
after-hours. Deaths were 27 percent for off-hour strokes caused by
bleeding in the brain versus 24 percent during normal hours.
A second study of 2.4 million stroke patients in California found
death rates of 10 percent on weekends and nights versus 8 percent
during weekdays.
Despite the poorer outcomes, doctors said no one should ever delay
getting help, since any delay raises the risk of death. The best
treatments can only be given in the first few hours after symptoms
appear.
Stroke conference:
http://www.strokeassociation.org
Body Mass Index calculator:
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/bmi/adult-BMI/english-bmi-calculator/bmi-calculator.htm
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