Harvard Health Content API

The recent stroke of U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk shows that these attacks can happen at any age. That’s the subject of an Associated Press (AP) article published January 30. Kirk’s stroke occurred after a tear in the carotid artery to his brain. Doctors still don’t know why that happened. Kirk, 52, an Illinois Republican, is fit and a devoted swimmer. But about 1 out of 4 U.S. strokes occurs in someone under age 65, AP said. The most common type of stroke is increasing among people under age 44. Hospital stays in this group for ischemic stroke have for risen by one-third in the last 10 years, AP said. An ischemic stroke is caused by a clot that blocks a blood vessel. Strokes are more common in younger people with high blood pressure and diabetes. These diseases are increasing along with the growth in obesity in the United States.

Even parents who use booster seats for their children don’t always insist on using the seats for carpooling, a new survey finds. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends booster seats for kids who are too big for a child car seat. Typically this occurs about age 4. The academy says kids are not protected enough by standard seat belts until they are about 4 feet, 9 inches tall. Most children reach this height between ages 8 and 12. Many states require booster seats up to age 8. The new study surveyed 671 U.S. parents. All of them had children who were 4 to 8 years old. About 3 out of 4 parents said they used booster seats for their children in their own cars. But these same parents did not always use booster seats for carpooling. About 1 out of 5 did not insist that their child use a booster seat when riding in a carpool with another parent.

People with diabetes are much less likely to lose a limb or a toe because of the disease, new research shows. The study found that the amputation rate for diabetics has dropped by more than half since the mid-1990s. Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did the study. It was based on hospital discharge records. Amputations are most common among people with diabetes who are elderly or have had the disease for at least 10 years. So the study focused on people age 40 and older. The amputation rate was 11.2 per 1,000 people in 1996. By 2008, the number of Americans with diabetes more than tripled. But the amputation rate dropped to about 4 per 1,000. Researchers said this drop probably was the result of better treatments. The journal Diabetes Care published the study. The Associated Press wrote about it January 25.

Avoiding certain health problems in middle age dramatically improves your lifetime chances of preventing a heart attack or stroke, a new study finds. The study included about 250,000 people. It looked at a person’s lifetime risk based on their health at certain ages. Researchers put together the numbers from 18 prior studies. To gauge health, they focused on the standard factors that most strongly increase the risk of heart attack or stroke. They are smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes. The study found that people with none of these risk factors at mid-life had very little chance of a heart attack or stroke in the rest of their lives. An example would be a 45-year-old male nonsmoker with ideal cholesterol and blood pressure, and no diabetes. His chance of ever having a heart attack or stroke would be 1.4%, researchers said.