Asian Scientist (Jul. 23, 2013) – A new study suggests that Chinese people may be at higher risk for stroke than Caucasians.
“While stroke is the second most-common cause of death worldwide, in China it is the leading cause of death and adult disability,” said study author Dr Chung-Fen Tsai.
“The global impact of stroke in the decades ahead is predicted to be greatest in middle income countries, including China. It is important to gain a better understanding of how stroke affects different populations as we try to reduce the burden of the disease worldwide.”
For the analysis, published in Neurology, researchers reviewed studies from 1990 onward that included people of Chinese ancestry in China and Taiwan. A total of 404,254 Chinese people were included. This included almost 4,000 incidents of strokes.
The researchers also analyzed 10 community-based studies among Caucasians that included 1,885,067 people and more than 4,500 incidents of strokes.
Comparing the two groups, the research found a slightly higher overall risk of stroke in Chinese people than in Caucasians, with a range of 205 to 584 strokes per 100,000 Chinese people age 45 to 74, compared to 170 to 335 strokes per 100,000 Caucasian people the same age.
Chinese also had a higher risk of intracerebral hemorrhage, a type of stroke due to bleeding into the brain from a ruptured blood vessel, compared to Caucasian people, or 33 percent of all strokes compared to 12 percent of all strokes in community-based studies.
Furthermore, Chinese people had a lower average age of stroke onset: 66 to 70 years-old, compared to 72 to 76 years-old for Caucasians.
The article can be found at: Tsai et al. (2013) Epidemiology Of Stroke And Its Subtypes In Chinese Vs White Populations.
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Source: AAN; Photo: ConstructionDealMkting/Flikr.
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