Friday, July 22, 2011

Stroke Burden Varies Considerably Around the World

Pauline Anderson
July 12, 2011 — Stroke mortality and disease burden relative to ischemic heart disease varies considerably around the world, with certain developing countries carrying a higher relative stroke burden, a new comprehensive global analysis shows.
"The most striking finding of this study was that even though heart disease was number 1 in terms of mortality burden as a whole worldwide, there are a substantial minority of countries where stroke is a larger burden than heart disease and many of these countries are in the developing world," said lead author Anthony S. Kim, MD, assistant professor of neurology, University of California, San Francisco.
The new study suggests that the greater stroke burden in developing areas of the world may be due to lower national income and vascular risk factors.China in particular is a "big outlier" when it comes to stroke burden relative to heart disease, said Dr. Kim. "The high mortality from stroke in this nation far outpaces ischemic heart disease, which is the exact opposite of the situation in the US, where heart disease outstrips stroke as a cause of death."
The study was published online July 5 in Circulation.
Researchers used data on mortality and rates of disability-adjusted life-years lost from stroke and ischemic heart disease from 192 World Health Organization (WHO) member countries. They also accessed national estimates of risk factors developed by the WHO Burden of Disease Program and income data from World Bank estimates/.../
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