(Press-News.org) Healthy lifestyle choices and emergency room interventions can help prevent first-time strokes, according to revised American Heart Association/American Stroke Association guidelines.
The guidelines, last updated in 2006, will be published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
"Between 1999 and 2006, there's been over a 30 percent reduction in stroke death rates in the United States and we think the majority of the reduction is coming from better prevention," said Larry B. Goldstein, M.D., chairman of the statement writing committee and director of the Duke Stroke Center in Durham, N.C.
Prior to this, the incidence of stroke may have been increasing, according to the statement that cites a 39 percent rise in hospitalizations between 1988 and 1997. As the population continues to age, the total number of Americans having a stroke is expected to rise.
More than 77 percent of the 795,000 strokes occurring in Americans each year are first events. The third leading cause of death in the United States after heart disease and cancer, stroke is a significant economic and social burden and one of the major causes of disability in adults.
For the first time, the prevention guidelines address stroke as a broad continuum of related events, including ischemic stroke, non-ischemic stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA). For prevention, there is often little difference along the stroke spectrum, said Goldstein, who is also a professor of medicine and director of Duke's ASA-Bugher Foundation Center for Stroke Prevention Research.
Accounting for 87 percent of all strokes, ischemic stroke happens when a blood vessel in or leading to the brain is blocked. TIA occurs when the blockage is temporary, but is considered a major risk factor for a later, larger stroke. A blood vessel rupture causes non-ischemic, or bleeding stroke, known as a hemorrhagic stroke.
The new guidelines feature several key prevention updates based on recent research:
Those who make healthy lifestyle choices — such as not smoking, eating a low-fat diet high in fruits and vegetables, drinking in moderation, exercising regularly and maintaining a normal body weight — lower risk of a first stroke as much as 80 percent compared with those who don't make such changes. The preventive benefit increases with each positive change adopted.
Emergency room doctors should try to identify patients at high risk for stroke and consider making referrals, conducting screenings or beginning preventive therapy.
Although genetic screening for stroke among the general population isn't recommended, it may be appropriate in certain circumstances, depending on family history and other factors.
The usefulness of stenting in persons who have a narrowing of a carotid artery in the neck as compared to an operation (endarterectomy) is still uncertain. Because of advances in standard medical therapies (including a change in lifestyle factors, treating high blood pressure and using antiplatelet and cholesterol lowering drugs) the usefulness of either procedure in persons who have not had symptoms is unclear. Doctors must decide whether to perform either procedure on a case-by-case basis.
General population screening for carotid artery narrowing isn't recommended.
Aspirin doesn't prevent a first stroke in low-risk persons or those with diabetes or asymptomatic peripheral artery disease. However, it's recommended for those whose risk is high enough for the reduction in stroke risk to outweigh the bleeding risks of aspirin.
INFORMATION:
Co-authors are: Cheryl D. Bushnell, M.D., M.H.S.; Robert J. Adams, M.S., M.D.; Lawrence J. Appel, M.D., M.P.H.; Lynne T. Braun, Ph.D., C.N.P.; Seemant Chaturvedi, M.D.; Mark A. Creager, M.D.; Antonio Culebras, M.D.; Robert H. Eckel, M.D.; Robert G. Hart, M.D.; Judith A. Hinchey, M.D., M.S.; Virginia J. Howard, Ph.D.; Edward C. Jauch, M.D., M.S.; Steven R. Levine, M.D.; James F. Meschia, M.D.; Wesley S. Moore, M.D.; J.V. (Ian) Nixon, M.D.; and Thomas A. Pearson, M.D. Individual author disclosures are on the manuscript.
NR10 – 1187 (Stroke/Goldstein)
Additional resources:
Downloadable stock footage, animation, and our image gallery are located at www.heart.org/news under Multimedia.
American Stroke Association
Stroke types, warning signs and risk factors
My Life Check personal heart score
Updated guidelines include new research, advances in stroke prevention
American Heart Association scientific statement
2010-12-04
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Great balls of evolution: UMass microbiologists evolve microorganisms to cooperate in new way
2010-12-04
AMHERST, Mass. – University of Massachusetts Amherst microbiologists Derek Lovley, Zarath Summers and colleagues report in the Dec. 2 issue of Science that they have discovered a new cooperative behavior in anaerobic bacteria, known as interspecies electron transfer, that could have important implications for the global carbon cycle and bioenergy.
The scientists found that microorganisms of different species, in this case two Geobacter species, can form direct electrical connections and pass an electric current from one microbe to the other. By cooperating in this way ...
'No fish left behind' approach leaves Earth with nowhere left to fish: UBC researchers
2010-12-04
The Earth has run out of room to expand fisheries, according to a new study led by University of British Columbia researchers that charts the systematic expansion of industrialized fisheries.
In collaboration with the National Geographic Society and published today in the online journal PLoS ONE, the study is the first to measure the spatial expansion of global fisheries. It reveals that fisheries expanded at a rate of one million sq. kilometres per year from the 1950s to the end of the 1970s. The rate of expansion more than tripled in the 1980s and early 1990s – to roughly ...
UCLA scientists discover mechanism that turns healthy cells into prostate cancer cells
2010-12-04
A protein that is crucial for regulating the self-renewal of normal prostate stem cells, needed to repair injured cells or restore normal cells killed by hormone withdrawal therapy for cancer, also aids the transformation of healthy cells into prostate cancer cells, researchers at UCLA have found.
The findings, by researchers with the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA, may have important implications for controlling cancer growth and progression.
Done in primary cells and in animal models, the findings from the three-year ...
JACS paper demonstrates continuous and controlled translocation of DNA polymer through a nanopore
2010-12-04
Santa Cruz, CA, USA and Oxford, UK, 2 December 2010: Research published this week in JACS shows continuous and controlled translocation of a single stranded DNA (ssDNA) polymer through a protein nanopore by a DNA polymerase enzyme. The paper by researchers at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) provides the foundation for a molecular motor, an essential component of Strand Sequencing using nanopores. Researchers at UCSC are collaborating with the UK-based company Oxford Nanopore Technologies, developers of a nanopore DNA sequencing technology.
The new research ...
Rewarding eco-friendly farmers can help combat climate change
2010-12-04
COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Financially rewarding farmers for using the best fertilizer management practices can simultaneously benefit water quality and help combat climate change, finds a new study by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER).
The researchers conclude that setting up a "trading market," where farmers earn financial incentives for investing in eco-friendly techniques, would result in a double environmental benefit – reducing fertilizer run-off destined for the Chesapeake Bay, while at the same time capturing carbon dioxide ...
Comparison of dark energy models: A perspective from the latest observational data
2010-12-04
Physicists at the Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Department of Physics at Northeastern University have made a comparison of a number of competing dark energy models. They have tested and compared nine popular dark energy models using the latest observational data. The study is reported in Issue 9 (Volume 53) of SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy because of its significant research value.
Over the past decade, cosmologists around the world have accumulated conclusive evidence for the fact that the cosmic expansion is accelerating. ...
Study of the high spin states in stable nucleus 84Sr
2010-12-04
The School of Nuclear Engineering and Technology at the East China Institute of Technology cooperated with the China Institute of Atomic Energy to investigate the high spin states of 84Sr. The study is reported in Issue 53 (October, 2010) of the Chinese Science Bulletin because of its significant research value.
Nuclei with Z ≈ 40 and N ≈ 45 lie in a transitional region between deformed nuclei and spherical nuclei. There are collective bands in some isotopes of nuclei of such elements as Sr, Zr and Mo, where the structures have single-particle features. 84Sr, ...
Evanescent wave imaging of adsorbed protein layers
2010-12-04
An evanescent wave arises at the interface of two media when light propagates from a more to a less-dense medium under total internal reflection. The wave is distributed over a superficial area because its amplitude decays exponentially with distance from the interface. The evanescent wave intensity at the interface can be larger than that of the incident beam. Evanescent waves have widespread current use in the imaging of chemical, bio-chemical and biological phenomenon. For example, an evanescent wave is responsible for fluorophore excitation in total internal reflection ...
Proposal for the establishment of a new branch within the discipline of aerothermodynamics
2010-12-04
Researchers from the College of Physical Sciences, GUCAS, have proposed to establish a new branch, unsteady aerothermodynamics, within the discipline of aerothermodynamics. The principal objectives of this new branch, to treat by theoretical means the study of physical phenomena relating to attached boundary layer flows, have been outlined in a preliminary investigation. A report based on a feasibility study has appeared in Vol. 54 No. 8 of Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy.
Aerothermodynamics, a cross-discipline based mainly on aerodynamics and thermodynamics, ...
Researchers find mathematical patterns to forecast earthquakes
2010-12-04
Researchers from the Universidad Pablo de Olavide (UPO) and the Universidad de Sevilla (US) have found patterns of behaviour that occur before an earthquake on the Iberian peninsula. The team used clustering techniques to forecast medium-large seismic movements when certain circumstances coincide.
"Using mathematical techniques, we have found patterns when medium-large earthquakes happen, that is, earthquakes greater than 4.4 on the Richter scale," Francisco Martínez Álvarez, co-author of the study and a senior lecturer at the UPO revealed to SINC.
The research, which ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
Testing thousands of RNA enzymes helps find first ‘twister ribozyme’ in mammals
Groundbreaking study provides new evidence of when Earth was slushy
International survey of more than 1600 biomedical researchers on the perceived causes of irreproducibility of research results
Integrating data from different experimental approaches into one model is challenging – this study presents a community-based, full-scale in silico model of the rat hippocampal CA1 region that integra
SwRI awarded grant to characterize Las Moras Springs watershed
Water overuse in MATOPIBA could mean failure to meet up to 40% of local demand for crop irrigation
An extra year of education does not protect against brain aging
Researchers from Uppsala and Magdeburg obtain an ERC Synergy Grant to advance cancer immunotherapy
Deaf male mosquitoes don’t mate
Recognizing traumatic brain injury as a chronic condition fosters better care over the survivor’s lifetime
SwRI’s Dr. James Walker receives Distinguished Scientist Award from Hypervelocity Impact Society
A mother’s health problems pose a risk to her children
Ensuring a bright future for diamond electronics and sensors
The American Pediatric Society selects Dr. Maria Trent as the Recipient of the 2025 David G. Nichols Health Equity Award
The first 3D view of the formation and evolution of globular clusters
Towards a hydrogen-powered future: highly sensitive hydrogen detection system
Scanning synaptic receptors: A game-changer for understanding psychiatric disorders
High-quality nanomechanical resonators with built-in piezoelectricity
ERC Synergy Grants for 57 teams tackling major scientific challenges
Nordic research team receives €13 million to explore medieval book culture
The origin of writing in Mesopotamia is tied to designs engraved on ancient cylinder seals
Explaining science through dance
Pioneering neuroendocrinologist's century of discovery launches major scientific tribute series
Gendered bilingualism in post-colonial Korea
Structural safety monitoring of buildings with color variations
Bio-based fibers could pose greater threat to the environment than conventional plastics
Bacteria breakthrough could accelerate mosquito control schemes
Argonne to help drive AI revolution in astronomy with new institute led by Northwestern University
Medicaid funding for addiction treatment hasn’t curbed overdose deaths
UVA co-leads $2.9 million NIH investigation into where systems may fail people with disabilities
[Press-News.org] Updated guidelines include new research, advances in stroke preventionAmerican Heart Association scientific statement