Lowering Cholesterol Lowers Women's Stroke Risk

Start paying attention to this risk factor when young, experts urge.

By Juhie Bhatia
HealthDay Reporter
Monday, February 19, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

MONDAY, Feb. 19 (HealthDay News) -- Cutting their cholesterol numbers may also help women reduce their risk of stroke, new research shows.

Harvard researchers have found that even healthy women with no history of heart disease or stroke are at an increased risk of stroke if they have high cholesterol. The study, in the Feb. 20 issue of Neurology, shows that these women were more than twice as likely to have a stroke than women with normal cholesterol levels.

"The link between cholesterol and coronary heart disease has been shown and replicated many times, but with stroke, it's not been as clear," said Dr. Tobias Kurth, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"Some links between stroke and cholesterol have been reported in men and in populations at high risk for or with high cardiovascular events. The findings here for women are clearer, though, and show that even in apparently healthy women, there's a risk," he said

The study looked at more than 27,000 women from the United States and Puerto Rico who were part of the Women's Health Study. The women were all health care professionals, at least 45 years old, and had no history of cardiovascular disease, cancer, or any other major illness. Researchers measured the women's cholesterol levels at the beginning of the study, and follow-up information was collected for an average of 11 years.

During this time, 282 strokes occurred among the women, or, put another way, nine out of every 10,000 women had a stroke each year.

With the exception of HDL (or "good") cholesterol, the study found that all cholesterols were strongly associated with a higher risk of ischemic stroke. Having high total cholesterol was related with a 2.3-fold increase in the risk of stroke and high LDL (or "bad") cholesterol was related with a 1.7-fold increase. The strongest association was found between non-HDL cholesterol and stroke (an almost 2.5 times greater risk of having an ischemic stroke).