Diet High in Antioxidants May Cut Stroke Risk

For women and it doesn't say anything about supplements.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/Strokes/29969?utm_source=cardiodaily&utm_medium=email&utm_content=aha&utm_campaign=12-02-11&eun=gd3r&userid=424561&email=oc1dean@yahoo.com&mu_id=

Action Points

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• The more antioxidants in a woman's diet the less chance there is she'll have a stroke, possibly due to the reduced oxidative stress and inflammation.
  



• Those with the highest total antioxidant capacity were found to eat twice as much fruit and vegetables and drink 17 times more tea than those with the lowest antioxidant intake.
  

The more antioxidants in a woman's diet the less chance there is she'll have a stroke, possibly due to the reduced oxidative stress and inflammation, according to the results of a long-term study in Sweden.

Among women with no history of cardiovascular disease at baseline, age-adjusted analysis showed that those with the highest intake of antioxidant-rich food had a 17% lower risk of total stroke when compared with those with the lowest antioxidant intake after an average 11-year follow-up, Alicja Wolk, DrMedSci, from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues found.

In the cohort of women with cardiovascular disease upon entry, the age-adjusted model showed no significant relationship, but the fully adjusted model showed a significant 46% to 57% reduction in stroke risk among those in the quartiles with highest consumption of antioxidant foods compared with those with the lowest intake, according to the study published online in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The multivariable adjustment included age, education, smoking, body mass index, physical activity, stroke, myocardial infarction, angina pectoris, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, family history of myocardial infarction, aspirin use, dietary supplement use, and intakes of total energy, alcohol, and coffee.

One other study examined stroke risk associated with antioxidant consumption in cardiovascular disease-free men and women and found a similar inverse relationship between healthy foods intake and decreased stroke risk (Am J Epidemiol 1986; 124: 17-27). But this is the first study to examine the risk in those already burdened with cardiovascular disease, the researchers noted.

The results of the current study, which measured total antioxidant consumption including "thousands of compounds in doses obtained from a usual diet," contradict results from randomized controlled studies that used antioxidant supplements such as vitamin E and failed to find a reduction in stroke.

For this study, Wolk and colleagues used the Swedish Mammography Cohort to include 36,715 women (31,035 with no history of cardiovascular disease), who were followed from September of 1997 through December of 2009.

They assessed their diet using a food frequency questionnaire and the total antioxidant capacity was found using oxygen radical absorbance capacity values. They used the Swedish Hospital Discharge Summary to find stroke cases among the participants.

Those with the highest total antioxidant capacity were found to eat twice as much fruit and vegetables and drink 17 times more tea than those with the lowest antioxidant intake. The healthier group also drank less coffee.

In those without cardiovascular disease, the 17% reduction in total stroke risk remained when researchers adjusted for red meat and fish consumption. When they adjusted for fruit and vegetable consumption (which contributes about half of the antioxidants), the risk reduction was no longer significant (HR 0.89, 95% CI 0.71 to 1.11).

The age-adjusted model for cerebral infarction showed a significant risk reduction (P=0.003) compared with the lowest quintile, but not the multivariable analysis. The risk reduction for hemorrhagic stroke also was not significant.

In this cohort, investigators excluded stroke cases that occurred in the first three years of follow-up and still found a 16% reduction in risk, which indicates that the results "were unlikely due to reversed causality."

In the women with cardiovascular disease, the model adjusted for fruit and vegetable consumption was not significant (HR 0.59, 95% CI 0.30 to 1.17). In this cohort, the women in the top three quartiles of antioxidant consumption had a significant reduction in hemorrhagic stroke risk in both adjusted models (P=0.03). The reduced risk in cerebral infarction was not significant.

The use of only food frequency questionnaires given at baseline (1997) was a limitation noted by the authors. The fact that the food questionnaires only looked at frequency and not actual intake is another concern since there are individual variations in portion sizes. Finally, there may be measurement errors related to the self-reported dietary intake.

"In conclusion, our results suggest that total antioxidant capacity of the diet may be of importance for the prevention of total stroke among cardiovascular disease-free women and hemorrhagic stroke among women with a cardiovascular disease history," wrote the authors. "Future studies should assess whether the association between total antioxidant capacity and stroke varies for different stroke subtypes and between cardiovascular disease-free populations and populations with a cardiovascular disease history."