The news release here;
http://www.wakehealth.edu/News-Releases/2014/Women_Fare_Worse_than_Men_Following_Stroke.htm
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Feb. 7, 2014 – The good news: More people survive stroke now than 10 years ago due to improved treatment and prevention.
The
bad news: Women who survive stroke have a worse quality of life than
men, according to a study published in the Feb. 7 online issue of the
journal Neurology.
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center compared
the quality of life in men and women who had a stroke or transient
ischemic attack (TIA). A total of 1,370 patients ages 56 to 77 from the
AVAIL registry – a national, multicenter, longitudinal registry of
ischemic stroke and TIA patients – were included in the study.
The
patients’ quality of life was measured at three months and one year
after a stroke or TIA using a formula that assesses mobility, self-care,
everyday activities, depression/anxiety and pain.
“We found
that women had a worse quality of life than men up to 12 months
following a stroke, even after considering differences in important
sociodemographic variables, stroke severity and disability,” said Cheryl
Bushnell, M.D., associate professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist
and senior author of the study.
“As more people survive
strokes, physicians and other healthcare providers should pay attention
to quality of life issues and work to develop better interventions, even
gender-specific screening tools, to improve these patients’ lives.”
The
study findings showed that at three months, women were more likely than
men to report problems with mobility, pain/discomfort and anxiety and
depression, but the difference was greatest in those over age 75. At one
year, women still had lower quality of life scores overall than men but
the magnitude of those differences had diminished, Bushnell said.
“The
reason we do these types of studies is to be able to add different
variables sequentially to determine what accounts for these gender
differences,” Bushnell said. “We found that age, race and marital status
accounted for the biggest differences between men and women at three
months, with marital status being the most important. Even though the
women in the study were older than the men, our study showed that age
really had very little effect on quality of life.”
The results
suggest that further research on mobility, pain or discomfort and
anxiety/depression may provide a clearer understanding for how to
improve the lives of women after stroke, Bushnell added.
The
next step for the Wake Forest Baptist team will be to look at the
trajectory of cognitive decline in men and women before and after
stroke, she said.
Co-authors of the study are Mathew J. Reeves,
Ph.D., Michigan State University; Xin Zhao, M.S., Wenqin Pan, Ph.D.,
Louise Zimmer, M.A., M.P.H., Eric Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., of Duke
Clinical Research Institute; Janet Prvu-Bettger, Sc.D., Duke University
School of Nursing; and DaiWai Olson, Ph.D., R.N., University of Texas
Southwestern.
Support for the study was provided by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke KO2 NS058760.
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