posted on Sep, 7 2011 @ 09:28 AM
LONDON: In a startling finding , a new research has shown that children as young as five years are now having strokes in the US and blamed unhealthy
lifestyles as the main reason behind the trend.
The stroke rate among five to 44-year-olds has gone up by about a third in the past 10 years, found the researchers at the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention.
The researchers, who analysed hospital data of millions of patients between 1995 and 2008, also found that high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity
were common in stroke patients, the BBC reported . During this period, the rate of ischemic stroke, which is caused due to blood clots, was found to
have gone up by 31% in five to 14-yearolds , from 3.2 strokes per 10,000 hospital cases to 4.2 per 10,000. While, the increase was 30% in people aged
15 to 34 years, it was 37% in patients between the ages of 35 and 44, the researchers found.
More than half of 35 to 44-year-olds who had an ischemic stroke also had hypertension , they said. "Urgent public health initiatives are needed to
reverse trends in modifiable risk factors associated with stroke in adolescents and young adults," they concluded. Dr Lorna Layward , from the Stroke
Association in the UK, said: "People usually associate strokes with older people, but a quarter of all strokes happen to people of working age, and
around 400 children have a stroke every year in the UK.
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