Does Diet Soda Tempt Vascular Dementia?
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LOS ANGELES — Even if you drink diet soda — instead of the sugar variety — you could still have a much higher risk of vascular events compared to those who don’t drink soda. Vascular events such as stroke are the foundations of vascular dementia's neurodegenerative cascade.
The research was presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2011. In findings involving 2,564 people in the large, multi-ethnic Northern Manhattan Study (NOMAS), scientists said people who drank diet soda every day had a 61% higher risk of vascular events than those who reported no soda drinking.
Hannah Gardener, Sc.D., is an epidemiologist at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine in Miami, Florida, and was the lead author of the study. She said,
“If our results are confirmed with future studies, then it would suggest that diet soda may not be the optimal substitute for sugar-sweetened beverages for protection against vascular outcomes.”
At the start of the study, researchers assessed diet by a food frequency questionnaire.
NOMAS is a collaboration of investigators at Columbia University in New York and Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, launched in 1993 to examine stroke incidence and risk factors in a multi-ethnic urban population. A total of 3,298 participants over 40 years old (average age 69) were enrolled through 2001 and continue to be followed. Sixty-three percent were women, 21 percent were white, 24 percent black and 53 percent Hispanic.
During an average follow-up of 9.3 years, 559 vascular events occurred (including ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, which is caused by rupture of a weakened blood vessel). Researchers accounted for participants’ age, sex, race or ethnicity, smoking status, exercise, alcohol consumption and daily caloric intake. And even after researchers also accounted for patients’ metabolic syndrome, peripheral vascular disease and heart disease history, the increased risk persisted at a rate 48 percent higher.
Participants’ reporting their dietary behavior is a key limitation of the study, Gardener said. In the soda study, investigators lacked data on types of diet and regular drinks consumed, preventing analysis of whether variations among brands or changes over time in coloring and sweeteners might have played a role.
The bottom line? Drinking diet soda daily is linked to a higher risk of vascular-related deaths, heart attack and strokes that often lead to vascular dementia.Tempt
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Co-authors for the soda study are: Tatjana Rundek, M.D., Ph.D.; Clinton Wright, M.D., M.S.; Julio Vieira, M.D., M.S..; Mitchell S. Elkind, M.D., M.S.; and Ralph L. Sacco, M.D., M.S.
Funding was provided by a Javits award from The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute.
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