First stroke prevention guidelines tailored to women released

Better late than never - for the first time, the American Heart Association and American Stroke Association have released stroke prevention guidelines tailored for women.

"If you are a woman, you share many of the same risk factors for stroke with men, but your risk is also influenced by hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other sex-related factors," Dr. Cheryl Bushnell, author of the new scientific statement published in the journal Stroke, said in a statement.

The guidelines recognize at-risk women and offer recommendations on how to combat them, including:

• Women with a history of high blood pressure before pregnancy should be considered for low-dose aspirin and/or calcium supplement therapy to lower preeclampsia risks.

• Women who have preeclampsia have twice the risk of stroke and a four-fold risk of high blood pressure later in life. Therefore, preeclampsia should be recognized as a risk factor well after pregnancy, and other risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol, and obesity in these women should be treated early.

• Pregnant women with moderately high blood pressure (150-159 mmHg/100-109 mmHg) may be considered for blood pressure medication, whereas expectant mothers with severe high blood pressure (160/110 mmHg or above) should be treated.

• Women should be screened for high blood pressure before taking birth control pills because the combination raises stroke risks.

• Women who have migraine headaches with aura should stop smoking to avoid higher stroke risks.

• Women over age 75 should be screened for atrial fibrillation risks due to its link to higher stroke risk.

"The risk factors that are unique to women need to be recognized, and women can start decreasing their risk much earlier than they thought, even in the childbearing years," Bushnell told USA Today.

According to the American Heart Association, stroke is the number four cause of death and leading cause of disability in the United States.