VIDEO: Psychosocial stress an ‘understudied’ area of stroke

African American men and women remain at higher risk for stroke even as overall stroke rates are decreasing, Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, MAS, MBA, MLS, says in this Healio video.

As National Stroke Awareness Month comes to a close, Ovbiagele, professor of neurology at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, says that health care professionals can do more to control preventable risk factors.

“A big, understudied area of stroke is psychosocial stress,” he said. “That is a huge area of increasing investigation to try and discriminate what might be contributing to the excess risk of stroke that we see in underrepresented minorities compared to their non-Hispanic, white counterparts.”