Stroke incidence, prevalence and mortality in women worldwide

Background The study of sex differences on stroke incidence, prevalence and mortality is an emerging field of stroke epidemiology and care. Aims This study sought to determine the information available on stroke epidemiology in women worldwide and possible sex differences in stroke epidemiology, and, if so, describe the nature of these differences and whether they are consistent across countries/groups of countries. Summary We searched the available literature in English published between 1 January 2008 and 5 May 2015. Out of 17.789 papers only 56 peer-reviewed papers (29 community-based studies, 17 retrospective studies, 6 reviews, and 4 cross-sectional studies) have been included in the s…