While urban life is often associated with stress and pollution, living in more intensely developed neighborhoods may actually protect against stroke, a new study suggests.
The research tracked more than 25,000 adults across the United States for over a decade, and found that residents in areas with higher levels of development, characterized by more buildings, sidewalks, and infrastructure, had a 2.5% lower risk of suffering a first-time stroke compared to residents in less developed areas.
The study utilized data from REGARDS, the REasons for Geographic And Racial Differences in Stroke study, which addresses health disparities in the “stroke belt,” an 11-state region in the Southeastern US where stroke mortality is disproportionately high among Black Americans, says Cathy Antonakos, research specialist senior in the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology and first author.
Past research on how neighborhood development affects stroke risk has been inconsistent, perhaps because it relied on static urban/rural labels, she says.
To address this, Antonakos and colleagues moved away from one-time snapshots and instead used satellite data to measure development intensity over time in 5-mile (8-km) road networks surrounding more than 34,000 residential locations. They found that the link between high/medium intensity development and reduced stroke risk remained—even after accounting for age, race, sex, and preexisting conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.
The next step in the research is to identify specific environmental features that are more common in areas with greater development intensity as compared to less developed areas, Antonakos says.
“High-intensity development typically includes greater housing density and more commercial/retail outlets,” she says.
“These areas are more likely to feature compact land uses with access to health care, food stores, public transport, and physical activity infrastructure like sidewalks, bike facilities, and parks.”
The study did not examine these environmental features, but there are some practical applications, Antonakos says.
“For physicians, the study suggests that neighborhood-level factors may influence first-time stroke risk, in addition to individual-level factors,” she says.
“For planners, the findings suggest that enhancing environments with features that support cardiovascular health and physical activity may help lower the risk of first-time stroke.”
The research appears in Cities & Health.
Additional coauthors are from the University of Michigan, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Cincinnati Academic Health Center.
Research reported in this publication was supported by cooperative agreement U01 NS041588, co-funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Health and Human Services.
Additional funding came from the NINDS and the NIA of the NIH, and from the NINDS of NIH.
The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. Representatives of the NINDS were involved in the review of the manuscript but were not directly involved in the collection, management, analysis, or interpretation of the data.
The research was also supported in part through computational resources and services provided by Advanced Research Computing, a division of Information and Technology Services at the University of Michigan.
Source: University of Michigan
