Study shows association between diabetes and stroke in women but not men

New research published in Diabetologia shows that diabetes in women is associated with an increased risk of stroke, whereas the data do not show the same association among men. The research is by Dr Wenhui Zhao (the first author), Dr Gang Hu and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.

Differences in incidence and mortality between sexes have been reported for various conditions, including stroke. More women than men tend to die from stroke in developed countries. For example, in the USA, 77,109 women and 52,367 men died from stroke in 2010. Women accounted for almost 60% of US stroke deaths in 2010. In the UK, 32,828 women and 20,358 men died from stroke in 2007.

The authors prospectively investigated the sex-specific association of different levels of HbA1c with incident stroke risk among 10,876 male and 19,278 female patients with type 2 diabetes in the Louisiana State University Hospital-Based Longitudinal Study (LSUHLS). During a mean follow up of 6.7 years, 2,949 incident cases of stroke were identified. The authors calculated the risk of stroke associated with different levels of HbA1c at baseline (<6.0%, 6.0