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| Alcohol consumption and risk of stroke among Chinese men |
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December 2007
Heavy drinking may increase the risk of stroke in Chinese men and should be targeted for prevention strategies, according to a new study to be published online in the Annals of Neurology.
Stroke is a leading cause of death and long-term disability in China. It kills more than 20 percent of the male population. A recently published study examined the relationship between alcohol consumption and risk of stroke among Chinese men.
Lydia A. Bazzano, MD, PhD, from the Department of Epidemiology, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, USA, and her colleagues conducted a prospective cohort study among 64,338 Chinese men aged 40 years who were free of stroke at baseline.
Data on frequency and type of alcohol consumed were collected at the baseline examination in 1991 using a standard protocol. Follow-up evaluation was conducted in 1999 to 2000, which included determining vital status, interviewing participants or proxies, and obtaining hospital and medical records for incidents and fatal strokes.
The investigators found that over the course of 493,351 person-years of follow-up, 3,434 incident strokes (1,848 stroke deaths) were documented. After adjustment for age, body mass index, physical activity, urbanisation (urban vs rural), geographic variation (north vs south), cigarette smoking, history of diabetes, and education, compared with nondrinkers, the relative risk (95% confidence interval) of incident stroke was 0.92 for participants consuming 1 to 6 drinks/week, 1.02 for those consuming 7 to 20 drinks/week, 1.22 for those consuming 21 to 34 drinks/week, and 1.22 for those consuming 35 or more drinks per week. The corresponding relative risks for stroke mortality were 0.93, 0.98, 1.15, and 1.30, respectively.
"Alcohol consumption was significantly related to increased stroke incidence and mortality," the authors report. "At the top level of alcohol consumption (at least 35 drinks per week), risk of stroke incidence was 22 percent higher and risk of mortality was 30 percent higher than among nondrinkers."
The authors concluded that these results suggest that heavy alcohol drinking may increase the risk for stroke in Chinese men and should be the target of strategies for prevention.
"Our findings are likely to be applicable to men of other ethnicities because they are based on proven physiological mechanisms," the authors conclude. "Preventing heavy alcohol consumption (more than 21 drinks per week) among men may be one element of multi-faceted public health strategies to reduce stroke burden in the world."
Reference:
Ann Neurol 2007; 62 (6): 569–578.
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