Diet soda drinks linked to heart problems in women

Diet drinks may raise the risk of strokes, heart attacks and other problems with heart in postmenopausal women, says informal research.

Compared to women who never or seldom consume diet drinks, those who drank two or more a day were 30 percent more likely to suffer a cardiovascular event and 50 percent more likely to die from related disease, reports Newsmax Health.

The findings were gleaned from an analysis of diet drink intake and consequences among almost 60,000 participants in the Women's Health Initiative, a long-running U.S. observational study of cardiovascular health trends among postmenopausal women.

"Our findings are in line with and extend data from previous studies showing an association between diet drinks and metabolic syndrome," said Dr. Ankur Vyas of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, lead investigator of the study. The syndrome is associated with a cluster of risk factors for heart disease, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and weight gain.

Results of the study were presented at the annual scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology, in Washington.

The average age of women in the diet drink study was 62.8, and they had to have had no history of cardiovascular disease to be included in the analysis.

 Through a questionnaire, the women were asked to report their diet drink consumption over the previous three months.

After an average followup of 8.7 years, a combination of negative outcomes including coronary heart disease, congestive heart failure, heart attack, ischemic stroke, peripheral arterial disease and cardiovascular death were seen in some 8.5 percent of women who consumed two or more diet drinks a day.

"We only found an association, so we can't say that diet drinks cause these problems," Vyas said, adding that other factors may explain the apparent connection between diet drink consumption and risk of heart attack and stroke.

Previous studies have suggested a connection between artificially sweetened drinks and weight gain in adults and teens.