May 15, 2017 – Diet Soda and Stroke

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Anchor lead: If you drink diet sodas you may want to consider that practice, Elizabeth Tracey reports

If you’re a fan of diet soda, a new study in the journal Stroke may give you pause. That’s because the study found an association between consumption of diet drinks and your risk of stroke. Rebecca Gottesman, a stroke expert at Johns Hopkins, describes the analysis.

Gottesman: What they reported is that people who had more intake of artificially sweetened soft drinks, so diet sodas, had a higher rate of stroke over time. They looked at overall stroke as well as ischemic stroke, which is the type of stroke where there’s a blockage of flow to the brain, and they found that there was an increased risk of stroke even when they accounted for other types of variables, which might play an important role here, and what’s a little odd is that they don’t find the same result for sweetened soft drinks, so they don’t see this increased risk of stroke and dementia.    :29

Gottesman cautions that this study only shows an association, which then suggests a question researchers could pursue in a prospective study designed to answer it, but says for now, drinking water is known to be a healthful choice. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.