Stroke prevention emerges from heart disease

Several studies due for publication over the next few months shouldrefine clinicians' thinking about certain aspects of primary and secondary stroke prevention, delegates to a meeting held by the Royal Society of Medicine in London, UK, recently heard. Moreover, the meeting offered a snapshot of the state of the stroke prevention market, as well as identifying several areas of unmet clinical need.

Certainly, therapeutic advances are needed: stroke imposes a heavy and increasingly weighty clinical burden. In the UK during 1999, deaths from stroke reached 78.7 per 100,000 men and 130.7 per 100,000 women. Charles Wolfe, reader in public health medicine at Guy's and St Thomas' Trust, London, reminded delegates that a quarter of men and a fifth of women over the age of 45 suffer a stroke by their 85th birthday.

This translates into considerable morbidity and mortality. Approximately one in 10 people who suffer an ischemic stroke die within 30 days. Moreover, only 65% of survivors are functionally independent a year following a stroke. As Dr Wolfe remarked: "the impact of stroke is considerable worldwide and is anticipated to increase by around 30% over the next 20 years as the population ages."