Obese African-Americans at higher risk of stroke

From MedPage Today:

Obesity raises the risk of stroke regardless of race or sex, according to a new study that is one of the first to show a link between obesity and stroke risk in blacks.

The most obese black women were at 43% higher risk of stroke than the thinnest black women (95% CI 0.81 to 2.53; trend P=0.016), while the fattest black men had more than three times the stroke risk of their thin counterparts (95% CI 1.53 to 6.67; trend P=0.0026), depending on the measure of obesity used, researchers reported online Jan. 21 in Stroke.

"Based on the fact that we consistently found positive associations between obesity measures and ischemic stroke incidence in blacks in the present study, we believe that obesity, however it is measured, significantly increases ischemic stroke risk in blacks as well as in whites," Hiroshi Yatsuya, MD, of the University of Minnesota, and colleagues concluded.

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