Feb
14
2011
image via www.nlm.nih.gov
Studies have established that elderly people with age related macular degeneration are more likely to experience strokes. A new study presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2011 is the first to determine the type of stroke that people with AMD are likely to suffer.
Researchers looked at two kinds of strokes: those caused by brain hemorrhage (aka a “bleeding stroke”) and those caused by brain infarction (a blood clot).
Macular degeneration is associated with brain hemorrhages rather than brain infarction.
Scientists involved with the study urge AMD patients not to worry that they will inevitably experience hemorrhaging in the brain. They state that more research is necessary. One doctor speculates that AMD does not cause bleeding stokes. Instead, the two medical conditions may stem from a common cause. Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/216090.php
Learn about how to prevent and even reverse macular degeneration.
May
28
2009
Although open-angle glaucoma (OAG) has been previously associated with some of the risk factors of stroke development, researchers at the Taipei Medical University in Taipei, Taiwan have now linked OAG with an increased risk of stroke development.
Researchers collected data from the 1,073,891 subjects in the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database. They compared 4032 patients with a diagnosis of OAG to 20,160 patients without OAG over a five year period.
Of the group of patients with OAG, 14.9% had strokes within the 5-year follow-up period, compared with 9.5% of patients in the comparison group. After adjusting for patients’ demographic characteristics, patients with OAG were found to have a 1.52-fold higher risk of having a stroke than the matched comparison cohort.
Study authors concluded that patients with OAG demonstrated a significantly increased risk of stroke development during the 5-year follow-up period.
Learn more about glaucoma including self-help tips
Read other studies about glaucoma
SOURCE: “Open-Angle Glaucoma and the Risk of Stroke Development. A 5-Year Population-Based Follow-Up Study”, Ho, et al, PubMed, 2009 May 21, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19461039
