The Racial Gap in U.S. Stroke Deaths Got Worse During the Pandemic

NEW YORK — The longstanding racial gap in U.S. stroke death rates widened dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, government researchers said Thursday. Stroke death rates increased for both Black and white adults in 2020 and 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. But the difference between the two groups grew about 22%, compared with the five years before the pandemic. “Any health inequity that existed before seems to have been made larger during the pandemic,” said Dr. Bart Demaerschalk, a stroke researcher at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix who was not involved in the new study. “This is another example of that.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] During a stroke, something blocks or reduces blood flow to part of the brain or a blood vessel in the brain bursts. It can result in brain damage or long-term disability and is the nation’s fifth leading cause of death. Until about a decade ago, the U.S. stroke death rate was falling because of improved treatment and reduced smoking rates. The decline halted in 2013 at about 70 per 100,000 adults 35 and older. Experts think increases in obesity and related conditions finally offset some of things that had been driving stroke deaths down. It climbed the last few years, rising to nearly 77 in 2021. Black Americans have long had a higher stroke death rate than their white counterparts, a gap that was fairly steady for decades. In 2021, according to the new ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 healthscienceclimate Source Type: news