Claiming Stroke Incidence to be Largely Preventable

This study builds on preliminary findings from the first phase of the INTERSTROKE study, which identified ten modifiable risk factors for stroke in 6,000 participants from 22 countries. The full-scale INTERSTROKE study included an additional 20,000 individuals from 32 countries in Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Australia, and sought to identify the main causes of stroke in diverse populations, young and old, men and women, and within subtypes of stroke. To estimate the proportion of strokes caused by specific risk factors, the investigators calculated the population attributable risk for each factor (PAR; an estimate of the overall disease burden that could be reduced if an individual risk factor were eliminated). The PAR was 47.9% for hypertension, 35.8% for physical inactivity, 23.2% for poor diet, 18.6% for obesity, 12.4% for smoking, 9.1% for cardiac (heart) causes, 3.9% for diabetes, 5.8% for alcohol intake, 5.8% for stress, and 26.8% for lipids (the study used apolipoproteins, which was found to be a better predictor of stroke than total cholesterol). Many of these risk factors are known to also be associated with each other (e.g. obesity and diabetes), and when combined together, the total PAR for all ten risk factors was 90.7%, which was similar in all regions, age groups and in men and women. Link: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-07/tl-tls071416.php
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs