Women more likely to be disabled by strokes

From USA Today:

Women take note. A new study exploring the impact of stroke in women has brought the picture into clearer focus. It isn't pretty. With 780,000 strokes occurring in the USA each year stroke has become the leading cause of disability and the third leading cause of death nationwide. Sixty thousand more strokes occur in women than men.

Now a new analysis used data from the famed Framingham study, a long-term study of the residents of the Massachusetts town, to look more closely at stroke in women. The results, released online this week in the journal Stroke, focused on more than 10,000 residents from two generations.

It showed that women were significantly older than men when they suffered their first stroke (75 years old versus 71) and that women older than 85 had more strokes than men. Even though men were more likely to suffer from heart disease and cancer, women who experienced strokes were still more likely to be disabled and institutionalized.

"In regard to elderly women, our data suggest a need for increased social support," say lead researcher Rodica Petrea, of Boston University, and her colleagues.