HealthWrap: Stroke Risk Spikes Twice Daily

By KATE WALKER

The day contains two time zones, one in the morning and one in the evening, when the risk of stroke is greatest, researchers have found.

The Japanese scientists, who published their findings in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, examined 12,957 stroke cases and found that while the risk of stroke was lowest during sleep, it peaked between the hours of 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., and again between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.

While they did not study the causes of the peak, they wrote in their findings that the cause was likely linked to the body’s internal clock, and was possibly attributable to changes in blood flow.

The BBC quoted the Stroke Association’s Joe Korner as saying: “Previous studies have shown that stroke risk does vary over the 24-hour cycle and that occurrence during sleep is most common for ischemic strokes.

This new study confirms that finding. However, more information is required about the different subtypes of ischemic stroke — there are several different types, each with very different causes.

An ischemic stroke occurs when blood flow to the brain’s arteries has been constricted.

Less common are hemorrhagic strokes, which happen when blood vessels burst within the brain, bleeding directly into brain tissue (intracerebral), or in the surface arteries (subarachnoid).

In related news, the total cost of U.S. stroke treatment between 2005 and 2050 is expected to exceed $2 trillion, according to the latest figures.

Dr. D.L. Brown and colleagues, from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, published their findings in the journal Neurology.

To arrive at the $2 trillion figure, they used data from two previous studies on strokes and the 2000 U.S. Census, and added to them a range of costs, including nursing home care; drugs; ambulance services; informal caregiving; outpatient services; inpatient hospitalization and rehabilitation; and potential earnings losses.

Lost earnings and informal caregiving were the highest two individual cost contributors in all race-ethnic groups, constituting approximately half of the total costs, the study’s authors wrote.

The per capita costs of stroke care varied among ethnic groups, with Caucasians, Hispanics and African-Americans costing approximately $16,000, $17,000 and $26,000 respectively.

Approximately $1 trillion — or fifty percent — will be used for people aged 45 to 64, while those over 85 account for a mere 10 percent of the spending.

In other health news:

— Scientists from the non-profit Family Health International this week published findings showing that healthy people can be given AIDS medication without suffering serious side effects.

It is hoped that AIDS drugs can be taken — either regularly or prior to high-risk sexual behavior — to prevent infection, and research to that end is currently under way on four continents.

In the study, 936 women from Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon were given either a placebo or the AIDS drug tenofovir. After six months, those women who were given tenofovir were found no more likely to have suffered medical complications than those who had been given the placebo.

Over the course of the study, eight women became infected with AIDS — two who had been taking tenofovir, and six who had been on the placebo.

While this rate of infection was so low that it cannot be used as the basis for any conclusive statement based on local statistics — Family Health International had expected as many as 30 new infections over the course of the study — it shows that more research is needed into the possibility of using AIDS medication as a preventative tool.

The risk of such treatment, should the research prove successful, is that by using a medication as a preventative, drug-resistance could emerge as a problem. The two women in the Family Health International study who had been given tenofovir are participating in further research to see if they have built up a resistance to the drug.

But, as Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky from Massachusetts General Hospital told Boston.com: It becomes a matter of a trade-off. How much resistance would you be willing to accept if this drug could work in preventing transmission?

— In news that is sure to bring grim resignation to mothers around the world, Italian researchers have discovered that children find television more pain-relieving than a mother’s love and attention.

The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood, studied 69 children between seven and 12, and found that they were better able to cope with a blood test — and the associated pain — when distracted by television than when their mothers attempted to soothe them.

The children were split into three groups: one had blood tests with no distraction, one received blood tests while their mothers attempted to distract them from the pain, and the final group was shown a cartoon while the blood test was performed.

The children and their mothers were then asked to rate the level of pain from the blood test.

Those who were not distracted exhibited the highest levels of pain, while those who had been allowed to watch the cartoon exhibited the least.

Mothers will not be surprised to discover that the child’s assessment of his or her level of pain was lower than the presumed level assessed by the mother.