New cases of a debilitating and deadly type of stroke causing bleeding in the brain have increased among younger to middle-aged adults, according to research from the American Heart Association (AHA).
The findings have shown an 11 per cent increase in intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) strokes over the past ten years and will be presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference.
“From a public health perspective, these results are troubling and indicate risk factors are not being well managed in young adults in the US,” said Dr Karen Furie, chief of neurology at Rhode Island Hospital and chair of the department of neurology at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School in Providence, not involved in the research.
She added: “Earlier onset of this disease is very alarming and indicates we need to be more aggressive with primary prevention.”
ICH strokes occur when blood vessels in the brain rupture and bleed. They are the second most common type, accounting for 10-15 per cent of the estimated 795,000 strokes each year in the US.
ICH strokes are more deadly and more likely to cause long-term disability than other types of stroke and globally, affected 18.9 million people in 2020, according to the AHA’s most recent heart and stroke statistics report.
In the new study, the researchers calculated the rate of ICH over five consecutive three-year periods from 2004 to 2018 with people being divided into four age groups: 18-44 years old, 45-64 years old, 65-74 years old, and 75 years and older.
The findings have shown an 11 per cent increase in the rate of ICH among US adults over the 15-year study period. ICH increased at a faster rate for adults under age 65 compared with those 75 and older.
Among those who had ICH strokes, the percentage of people who had high blood pressure also rose, from 74.5 per cent to 86.4 per cent over the period of the study.
High blood pressure is a major risk factor for an ICH stroke, as is increasing age. Furie described the findings as “alarming”, as they highlight how poorly the blood pressure is controlled among younger adults.
“ICH occurs after decades of vascular damage from unmanaged high blood pressure,” she added. “It’s terrible that this is occurring. Failure to reverse the trend could be devastating.”
For this reason, researchers have highlighted the importance of conducting future studies on these young age groups.
“We need to be teaching people to adopt a healthy diet, engage in regular physical activity, avoid heavy alcohol and drug use and monitor for vascular risk factors during young adulthood,” the neurology expert said. “This is the only way to ensure the problem does not become symptomatic by the time they reach their 40s and 50s.”
