Women who imbibe sugary soft drinks almost every day are 83 per cent more likely to have a certain type of stroke than women who rarely drink sodas and other sweetened beverages, according to a Japanese study.
The results, which appeared in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, agree with a host of other studies tying sugary drinks to numerous untoward health effects, including heart attacks, obesity and diabetes, and prompting government moves, such as New York's ban on super-sized sodas.
Given the increased availability of soft drinks in Japan over the past several decades, researchers led by Hiroyasu Iso at Osaka University wanted to see if soda drinkers there had higher risks of heart disease and stroke.
"Soft drink intake is associated with higher risk of ischemic stroke for women," wrote Iso and his team, referring to a kind of stroke with plaque buildup in the arteries.
Nearly 40,000 people answered a dietary, health and lifestyle questionnaire, first in 1990 and then again in 1995 and 2000. They were split into four groups - those who rarely drank soft drinks, those who had one to two cups a week, those who had three to four cups a week and those who had a soft drink (including sugar-sweetened sodas and juices, and not diet sodas or 100 per cent fruit juices) nearly every day.
The researchers then tracked how many people developed heart disease or had a stroke from the beginning of the study period until 2008.
Out of 11,800 women who rarely had a soft drink, 205 - or 1.7 per cent - had an ischemic stroke. Of the 921 women who had a soft drink a day, 28, or three per cent, had such a stroke.
The research team saw no link in men between soft-drink consumption and stroke risk.
