Association between recent sports activity, sports activity in young adulthood, and stroke.
OBJECTIVE
Leisure-time physical activity protects from stroke. It is insufficiently established whether early lifetime physical activity is independently protective and whether some etiologic stroke subgroups particularly benefit from physical activity. We tested the hypothesis that both recent and early-adulthood sports activities are associated with reduced odds of stroke and analyzed their effects in stroke subtypes.


METHODS
We performed a case-control study of 370 patients with acute stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) and 370 age- and sex-matched control subjects randomly selected from the population and assessed recent and young adulthood sports activities and their weekly duration in standardized interviews.


RESULTS
Recent regular sports activities were less often reported by patients (94/370, 25.4%) than by control subjects (162/370, 43.8%; P<0.0001). After adjustment for vascular risk factors, education, and other factors, recent participation in sports was significantly associated with reduced odds of stroke/TIA (odds ratio=0.64; 95% CI, 0.43 to 0.96). Both groups did not differ with regard to sports activities in young adulthood. More control subjects (69/365, 18.9%) than patients (25/361, 6.9%) participated in sports recently after not having been active in young adulthood, and such a pattern was associated with reduced odds of stroke/TIA in multivariable analysis (odds ratio=0.37; 95% CI, 0.21 to 0.85).


CONCLUSIONS
Our study supports previous results that have shown stroke protection by physical activity. Results suggest that continuous lifetime activity or starting activities during later adulthood is required to reduce stroke risk.
Grau
Armin J
AJ
Department of Neurology, Klinikum der Stadt Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. graua@klilu.de
Barth
Cordula
C
Geletneky
Beate
B
Ling
Paul
P
Palm
Frederik
F
Lichy
Christoph
C
Becher
Heiko
H
Buggle
Florian
F
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002545:Brain Ischemia / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002543:Cerebral Hemorrhage / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D002546:Ischemic Attack, Transient / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009043:Motor Activity; D016017:Odds Ratio; D012042:Registries; D012307:Risk Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013177:Sports / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D020521:Stroke / Q000145:classification / Q000453:epidemiology*; D055815:Young Adult