from International Journal of Epidemiology
After nearly four decades of dramatic declines in deaths from stroke in the United States, death rates are rising again. The risk of stroke increases as we get older and as the numbers of elderly Americans increase so have the numbers of deaths from stroke. Rutgers University researchers observed that death rates for ischemic stroke—those caused by blocked blood vessels in the brain fell about eighty percent over the four decades in the study. Hemorrhagic stroke also declined, but not by as much. Researchers found age-related stroke deaths per one hundred thousand people bottomed out in 2014, then started climbing again during the last five years of the study period. The study appears in the International Journal of Epidemiology.