Women Have Double the Risk of Mid-Life Stroke

A UCLA team collected data on 17,000 American women and men involved in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Among these adults, 606 reported having had a stroke. The researchers found that women 45 to 54 years old were more than twice as likely as men in the same age group to have had a stroke. There were no differences in stroke rates found in the 35-to-44 and the 55-to-64 age groups, they noted. The researchers found that the independent predictors of stroke in women of that age group were coronary artery disease and waist circumference, (both associated with obesity & type II diabetes.)