Stroke

The relationship of cerebrovascular disease to obesity and overweight has not been as well studied as the relationship to CHD. A report from the Framingham Heart Study suggested that overweight might contribute to the risk of stroke, independent of the known association of hypertension and diabetes with stroke (11).

More recently published reports (12, 13) are based on larger samples and delineate the importance of stroke subtypes in assessing these relationships. They also attempt to capture all stroke events, whether fatal or nonfatal. These studies suggest distinct risk factors for ischemic stroke as compared to hemorrhagic stroke, and found overweight to be associated with the former, but not the latter. This may explain why studies that use only fatal stroke outcomes (and thus overrepresent hemorrhagic strokes) show only weak relationships between overweight and stroke.

These recent prospective studies demonstrate that the risk of stroke shows a graded increase as BMI rises. For example, ischemic stroke risk is 75 percent higher in women with BMI > 27, and 137 percent higher in women with a BMI > 32, compared with women having a BMI < 21 (12).