HHS HealthBeat (May 3, 2010)

An inheritance of stroke

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

A study indicates that if one of your parents had a stroke before the age of 65, the odds are higher that you could have one, too.

Sudha Seshadri of Boston University School of Medicine saw that in the long-running Framingham Heart Study. She says children of those parents had three times the stroke risk of people whose parents had not had strokes.

"This was of the same magnitude as some of the known risk factors, such as high blood pressure or heart disease." (8 seconds)

Seshadri says people whose parents had a stroke need especially to control those other risk factors, by things such as proper eating and physical activity.

The study in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011