That, according to a report in
the December 9th and 23rd issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, from new
data from the US Physicians' Health Study.
Dr. Tobias Kurth said that, "There is a clear
linear association between BMI and stroke, which holds true for total,
ischemic, and hemorrhagic stroke, and is independent of possible biological
mediators such as hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol."
Dr. Kurth, from Brigham and Women's Hospital,
Boston, and colleagues collected data on 21,414 men who participated in the
Physicians' Health Study. The researchers looked for incidence of stroke and
compared these with BMI.
There were 747 stroke during 12.5 years of
follow-up, the researchers found. Of these 631 were ischemic and 104 were
hemorrhagic with 12 undefined.
Men with a BMI of 30 or greater were at a
significantly greater risk for stroke compared with men whose BMI was less than
25 (relative risk 1.91 for total stroke, 1.87 for ischemic stroke and 1.92 for
hemorrhagic stroke), Dr. Kurth's team reports.
As a continuous variable, each 1-unit increase in
BMI was associated with a 6% increase in relative risk for all stroke, they add.
The risk for ischemic stroke was slightly attenuated by adjusting for
hypertension, diabetes and hypercholesterolemia. However, these adjustments did
not alter the risk for hemorrhagic stroke, they note.
"Since the numbers of adults, in particular young
adults who are overweight and obese is rising in the US and industrial countries
and stroke is the main cause of disability and third leading cause of death, the
study results are even more important," Dr. Kurth said.
"This study provide evidence that staying lean modifies your risk of stroke and physicians should consider increased risk of stroke another hazard of obesity. We hope that physicians will focus more on obesity as target for stroke prevention," he stressed.
Source: Diabetes In Control Dot Com: Arch Intern
Med 2002;162:2557-2562.
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