CASE REPORT: Ischemic stroke in young secondary to hyperhomocystenemia

Abstract

Stroke is often thought to be a disease of the elderly, but in the recent years there have been increasing incidence of cases reported with stroke in much younger population. Its extremely unfortunate that there is no surprise anymore to have a stroke diagnosed in a very young patient, it would not be wrong to say that stroke is no more of a disease of the old age. When stroke in older age group, mostly retired population can bring with it major emotional and financial adjustments in a family, one cannot even imagine the dire consequences of such a tragedy when it affects a young and most often than not the sole healthy breadwinner of the family. Here we present a case of a young man with diabetes, who presented with the weakness of his dominant (right) hand.  On evaluation he was found to have an ischemic infract in the dominant hemisphere most probably secondary to elevated levels of hyper-Homocysteinemia. With more  young people been diagnosed with hypertension or diabetes there is an urgent need to also screen these individuals for presence of additional other common conditions that can contribute towards more serious/ life threatening conditions  (like stroke and MI) with major irreversible deficits.