The death of Richard Nixon marked the seventh time that a chief executive of the United States has succumbed to a stroke.
It also confirmed the widely held belief that the presidency is one of the most stressful occupations in the world, a "killing job," says Dr. Shri Mishra, a neurologist at the Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic in Los Angeles.In a recent study, Mishra reviewed the health records and historical reports of the 41 presidents from George Washington to Bill Clinton. Strokes have been the most common cause of death for presidents while in the general population, they are the third leading cause, after heart attacks and cancer.
Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Warren Harding were killed by strokes while in office. Woodrow Wilson suffered several while in office, then succumbed to a stroke after he left the White House.
Other stroke victims were diabetic Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams (who died on the floor of the House of Representatives), Dwight Eisenhower (who also had numerous heart attacks) and Nixon.
Until Nixon's death, no president had suffered a stroke in 34 years, Mishra noted. That's probably because recent presidents are more health conscious than their predecessors. They control their high blood pressure, don't smoke, don't drink excessive amounts of alcohol and watch their diets.
Anti-cancer drug
A powerful anti-cancer drug has halted the progressive, widespread damage caused by multiple sclerosis during tests at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
The drug is Cladribine, a therapy previously used to successfully combat several types of leukemia.
During the past three years, Cladribine halted - but did not cure - the disease's destructive downward course. Multiple sclerosis victims suffer increasing paralysis, tremors, spasticity, muscle weakness and impaired thinking and reasoning.
Though physicians don't know for sure what causes MS, they think the body's white blood cells attack the myelin sheath that insulates nerves.
Cladribine's effectiveness was confirmed by a double-blind medical study in which 24 MS victims received the drug and 24 others were given salt water injections. Cladribine's positive impact was so marked that the study was discontinued at the end of one year and those that were getting saline injections were switched to the drug.
"There is no question that Cladribine favorably influences the clinical course of chronic progressive multiple sclerosis," said Dr. Ernest Beutler, chairman of Scripps' Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine and one of the drug's developers.
A nationwide test to confirm Cladribine's effect is being organized, Beutler said.