Diabetes ups stroke risk in women but not men

A new study has found association between diabetes and stroke in women, but the data does not show the same association among men.

The research by Dr Wenhui Zhao, Dr Gang Hu and colleagues at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA, 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).

It was found that among men, although there was a trend towards increased risk of stroke as HbA1c increased, this increased risk was not statistically significant.

Among women, however, those with HbA1c of 8.0.9 percent were 19 percent more likely to have a stroke than the normal blood sugar reference group women; those with 9.0.9 percent HbA1c were 32 percent more likely to have a stroke, and those above 10 percent HbA1c were 42 percent more likely to have a stroke, with each of these associations statistically significant.

The study was published in the journal Diabetologia.