Dear Reader:

As I read of the results of a study conducted by researchers at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, I was somewhat relieved by their findings and at the same time, troubled to learn that children do suffer strokes. Childhood or adolescent strokes don’t occur at the same rates as adults, but the thought that young people should be at risk of stroke at all was alarming to me.

The bright side of the story was that statistics indicate that there has been a slight decrease for Black children for at least one type of stroke they suffer from, the same study indicates that for another stroke type there has been little change.

I dug a bit deeper into the data surrounding this issue and found that children suffer strokes as a result of:

• Heart Disease or Cardiac Disorders 
• Blood Disorders
• Clotting or Coagulation Disorder
• Sickle Cell Disease
• Infections – Chicken Pox; Meningitis; Encephalitis

These are risk factors for ischemic strokes in children. The following are risk factors for hemorrhagic strokes in children:

• Blood Disorders
• Vascular Malformations
• Malignancy

Despite all the research, in about a third of the cases, the cause of strokes in children is unknown.    

Here’s the article.

Risk of death from ischemic stroke appears to have decreased in US black children

The JAMA Network Journals

The excess risk of death from ischemic (due to reduced blood flow), but not hemorrhagic (due to bleeding), stroke in Black children in the United States has decreased over the past decade, according to a study by Laura L. Lehman, M.D., of Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues.

The study analyzed death certificate data from the National Center for Health Statistics for all children who died from 1988 through 2007 in the United States. Among 1.6 billion person-years of US children (1988-2007), there were 4,425 deaths attributed to stroke, yielding an average of 221 deaths per year; 20 percent were ischemic; 67 percent, hemorrhagic; and 12 percent were unspecified. The relative risk of ischemic stroke mortality for Black versus White children decreased from 1.74 from 1988 through 1997 to 1.27 from 1998 through 2007. The ethnic disparity in hemorrhagic stroke mortality, however, remained relatively stable between these 2 periods: Black versus White relative risk, 1.90 (1988-1997) and 1.97 (1998-2007), according to the study results.

"The excess risk of death from ischemic, but not hemorrhagic, stroke in US Black children has decreased over the past decade. The only major change in childhood stroke care during this period was the initiation of long-term blood transfusion therapy for primary stroke prevention in sickle cell disease," the study concludes.

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Eric Von

Publisher/Editor