Abstract
Objective: To investigate the association between a low-risk lifestyle and risk of stroke.
Methods: The study population comprised 31,696 women, in the population-based Swedish Mammography Cohort who at baseline had completed a questionnaire about diet and lifestyle and were free from cardiovascular disease and cancer. We defined a low-risk lifestyle as a healthy diet (top 50% of a Recommended Food Score), moderate alcohol consumption (5–15 g/d), never smoking, physically active (walking/bicycling ≥40 min/d and exercise ≥1 h/wk), and body mass index below 25 kg/m2. Stroke cases were identified from the Swedish National Patient Register and the Swedish Cause of Death Register.
Results: We ascertained 1,554 incident stroke cases, including 1,155 cerebral infarctions, 246 hemorrhagic strokes, and 153 unspecified strokes during 10.4 years of follow-up. The risk of stroke, in particular cerebral infarction, decreased steadily with increasing number of low-risk lifestyle factors. Compared with no low-risk factors, the multivariable relative risks (95% confidence interval) of cerebral infarction across increasing number of low-risk factors (1–5) were 0.72 (0.56–0.93), 0.67 (0.52–0.85), 0.57 (0.44–0.74), 0.54 (0.40–0.73), and 0.38 (0.20–0.73).
Conclusions: These findings indicate that a low-risk lifestyle can substantially reduce the risk of stroke, especially cerebral infarction.
GLOSSARY
- BMI=
- body mass index;
- CI=
- confidence interval;
- ICD-10=
- International Classification of Diseases, tenth revision;
- NRFS=
- Non-Recommended Food Score;
- RFS=
- Recommended Food Score;
- RR=
- relative risk
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article. The Article Processing Charge was paid by the authors.
Supplemental data at Neurology.org
- Received January 20, 2014.
- Accepted in final form July 29, 2014.
- © 2014 American Academy of Neurology
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial No Derivative 3.0 License, which permits downloading and sharing the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially.
Disputes & Debates: Rapid online correspondence
- Response to Braillon
- Smoking is the first avoidable cause of stroke and modest alcohol consumption causes cancers.
REQUIREMENTS
If you are uploading a letter concerning an article:
You must have updated your disclosures within six months: http://submit.neurology.org
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.