Big increase in
middle-aged women's strokes linked to belly fat

Strokes have tripled in recent years among middle-aged women in the United States. It's an alarming trend and doctors are pointing fingers at the obesity epidemic.

In the most recent federal health survey, nearly 2 percent of women ages 35 to 54 reported suffering a stroke. The survey covered the years from 1999 to 2004.

Because most strokes happen to older people, the percentage is small. But the sudden spike in middle age and the reasons behind it are ominous, doctors said in research presented February 20th at a medical conference.

Interestingly enough, strokes were occuring even among women using medicines to control their cholesterol and blood pressure. These should have helped prevent strokes.

But here's what the numbers did reveal: Women's waistlines are nearly two inches bigger than they were a decade ago. And those numbers correspond with the increase in strokes.

Two more numbers corresponded as well. Women's average body mass index rose from 27 in an earlier survey to 29 in the latest one. Higher blood sugar levels also rose.

No other traditional risk factors like smoking, heart disease or diabetes changed enough between the two surveys to account for the increase in strokes.

In a "pre-stroke population" of middle-age women, a tripling of cases is "an alarming increase," said Dr. Ralph Sacco, neurology chief at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Participants in the survey were routinely asked whether a doctor had ever told them they had had a stroke, and about 5,000 middle-aged people answered that question in each survey.

Researchers saw that the stroke rate had spiked in middle-aged women but stayed about the same -- around 1 percent -- in middle-aged men. So they looked deeper at the responses to see if they could learn why.

Belly fat stood out. The portion of women with abdominal obesity rose from 47 percent in the earlier survey to 59 percent in the recent one.

Traditionally, men have had a greater risk of stroke than women. Women have had a five or ten year "grace period" before catching up to the men. But this new research is turning that tradition upside down. Dr. Philip Gorelick, neurology chief at the University of Illinois said: "we need to redefine our textbooks about stroke in women," because they may now be more at risk in middle age than men.

Obesity "sets the stage for all the other risk factors to come in" like diabetes and heart disease, Gorelick added.