Risk Factors and Prediction of Stroke in American Indians

Stroke, also known as cerebrovascular disease, is a sudden interruption of the blood supply to the brain for a blood vessel bursts or is blocked by a clot, which cuts off the supply of oxygen and nutrients, causing damage to the brain tissue. And its most common symptoms include sudden weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg, most often on one side of the body, sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding, and so on. The effects of a stroke depend on the severity and which area of the brain is injured. And there are two types of stroke: ischemic stroke, which is most common and caused by an abrupt blockage of an artery and hemorrhagic stroke, which is caused by bleeding into brain tissue when a blood vessel bursts.

According to the data from World Heart Federation, stroke is the second leading cause of disability, after dementia and every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. And globally, stroke is the second leading cause of death above the age of 60 years, and the fifth leading cause of death in people aged 15 to 59 years old.

In this paper, the authors discussed stroke occurred in American Indians. They presented gender-specific stroke risk prediction equations based on longitudinal data from the Strong Heart Study (SHS) during 1989-2010. And a total of 3483 (2043 women) participants free of stroke at baseline were followed from 1989 to 2010 for incident stroke. Among them, 297 (179 women) suffered an incident stroke. The baseline characteristics and outcome variables were presented in the paper. Then the statistical methods, development of prediction equations and discrimination, calibration, and validation of the prediction equations were introduced.

The authors analyzed and discussed the result obtained. The findings indicated that the generated stroke prediction models based on the data from the SHS provided a mechanism for stroke risk assessment designed for American Indians and they can be also useful to other populations with high prevalence of obesity and/or diabetes for screening individuals for risk of incident stroke and designing prevention programs.

Article by Wenyu Wang, et al, from USA.

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Image by Mercy Gilbert Medical Center, from Flickr-cc.