A University of Michigan study indicates strokes will cost the United States $2.2 trillion by 2050 if prevention and treatment don't improve.
A disproportionate share of the bill will be for African-American and Latino stroke patients, because of their tendency to suffer strokes at younger ages and receive poorer-quality preventive care than others, Michigan researchers said. Stroke-related costs among people under age 65 account for about half of the predicted total, which includes lost wages.
The study's lead author, Dr. Devin Brown, an assistant professor at the university, said the study highlights the importance of efforts to prevent strokes in all ethnic groups, but especially in young and middle-aged African-Americans and Latinos.
"Doing the right thing now ultimately could be cost-saving in the future, but we have a long way to go before all Americans receive adequate stroke prevention and emergency stroke care," she said. "If our society is not going to do it for the right reasons, perhaps we can do it because it's going to be obscenely expensive."
The research appears in the online version of the journal Neurology.
Copyright 2006 by United Press International
Related stories:
Study finds stroke-prevention surgery safe in growing 80-plus population
New research published in the October issue of
Journal of the American College of Surgeons challenges the current opinion that patients in their eighties, who are often deemed "high-risk" due to their advanced age, should not undergo carotid endarterectomy – a stroke-preventing surgical procedure that clears blockages from the neck's carotid arteries.
Unusual case of a woman who suffered stroke during sex
Minutes after having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend, a 35-year-old woman suddenly felt her left arm go weak. Her speech became slurred and she lost feeling on the left side of her face.
High blood pressure after stroke should not necessarily rule out use of clot-busting treatment
Patients who require therapy to lower their blood pressure following a stroke do not appear to be at a higher risk for bleeding or other adverse outcomes after receiving anti-clotting therapy, according to a report in the September issue of
Archives of Neurology, one of the
JAMA/Archives journals.
New hope for stroke patients
If a stroke patient doesn't get treatment within approximately the first three hours of symptoms, there's not much doctors can do to limit damage to the brain.
Leukemia drug could save lives of stroke patients
Studies in mice reveal why tPA may cause brain damage
The drug tPA is the most effective treatment currently available for stroke patients, but its safety is limited to use within the first three hours following the onset of symptoms. After that, tPA may cause dangerous bleeding in the brain. However, in a study published today in
Nature Medicine, investigators from the Stockholm Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and the University of Michigan Medical School show that these problems might be overcome if tPA is combined with the leukemia drug, imatinib (Gleevec®). The results demonstrate that imatinib greatly reduces the risk of tPA-associated bleeding in mice, even when tPA was given as late as five hours after the stroke had begun. The LICR team, in collaboration with the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, is now planning a clinical trial with imatinib in stroke patients.
Researchers fine-tune clot-busting treatment for bleeding in brain
A multicenter study led by Johns Hopkins doctors has fine-tuned the dosage and timing for administering clot-busting tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to patients with strokes caused by bleeding within the brain. The treatment, as reported this week at the European Stroke Conference in Nice, France, has been shown to dramatically decrease death and disability in patients with this typically lethal subset of stroke.
New blood pressure medication has fewer side effects: Global study
A major Canadian-led global study has found that a new blood pressure medication is effective in reducing cardiovascular death, with fewer side effects than the current standard of care.
Improving doctor-patient communication yields significant health benefits
A UCSF research team has developed a simple tool that can improve the effectiveness of communication between doctors and patients about prescribed medications and result in dramatic improvements in health and safety.