Climate change could make strokes more common.
That’s the conclusion of an international panel of experts that reviewed almost 200 scientific publications assessing the link between strokes and global warming. Stroke risk increases with temperature extremes, as well as with exposure to wildfire smoke, dust and sandstorms, according to a World Stroke Organization study recently published in the International Journal of Stroke.
“This is happening right now, all the time,” said Anna Ranta, an academic stroke neurologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who led the research. The uptick in strokes disproportionately impacts low- and middle-income countries around the equator. “I think high income countries haven’t seen the impacts, and I think that’s why we don’t have that visibility.”
The findings come as international efforts to stop global warning face geopolitical headwinds. President Donald Trump has dismissed efforts to curb climate change as a “con job” and withdrawn the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. His administration has also rolled back climate regulations, as well as EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding establishing that greenhouse gases are a danger to human health.
