In Oxfordshire,England, for the first time anywhere in the world, there is reliable evidence of a fall in the incidence and severity of stroke in recent years, Oxford University researchers reported in The Lancet this week.
By performing a detailed study of all aspects of stroke in Oxfordshire during 2002-2004, Dr Peter Rothwell and his colleagues in Oxford's Department of Clinical Neurology have been able to compare incidence and severity of stroke with that in a similar study performed in Oxford in the early 1980s. They have shown that stroke incidence and severity have fallen substantially.
The fall is despite a major increase in the age of the population: 33 per cent more people are aged over 75 now than in the early 1980s. Given the rapidly ageing population in the UK, the expectation has been that the burden of stroke, which tends to occur in late middle age and in the elderly, will increase dramatically – what the World Health Organisation has called a 'looming epidemic'. These results offer a more optimistic outlook.
The study also showed that the change in stroke incidence has been associated with major increases in the prescribing of preventive medication by GPs, and substantial improvements in the control of risk factors. There has been uncertainty about the extent to which blood pressure lowering, cholesterol lowering, and antiplatelet drugs, which have been shown to prevent stroke in clinical trials, can reduce the burden of stroke in the general population, but this study suggests that their impact has been considerable.