Female Stroke Victims Recover Worse than Men

Women might have it worse off than men after a stroke according to a new study.

The study, published in Neurology, tested a total of 1,370 participants between 56 and 77 years of age. All participants were recent stroke victims, who agreed to be studied for up to 12 months after the stroke. Researchers measured the quality of life of these patients based on clinical and economic data, as well as social interaction.

What they found was that women were markedly more prone to depression, pain, discomfort, and anxiety even a year after having a stroke. While this was noticeable in men too, these consequences of stroke recovery were generally less severe for them, compared to their women counterparts. Women also exhibited a higher severity of restricted mobility following a stroke.

Researchers wrote that one explanation for this is that women tend to experience strokes late in life, when things like mobility and discomfort are already deteriorating. Still the data indicated that even men on the older side of the age-pool tended to have a better post-stroke quality of life than women. In fact, the stroke recovery difference was most noticeable in those subjects that were older than 75.

What makes this most interesting -- and a bit ironic -- is that it is common scientific knowledge that women tend to outlive men. This is arguably because men tend to wear themselves down with a higher tendency towards unhealthy living. The fact that it appears men recover better than women from serious late-life complications raises many unanswered questions.

The study concluded that regardless of age past a certain point, the average woman is going to have a  hard time recovering from strokes. The reasons behind this remain unclear, but the data does suggest that doctors should pay special attention to the stroke recovery process of their female patients to ensure that the recovery goes as smoothly as humanly possible.

The study was published in Neurology on February 7.