We prospectively followed 74,961 participants (34,670 women and 40,291 men) who had completed a food frequency questionnaire in the autumn of 1997 and were free from stroke, coronary heart disease, and cancer at baseline. Diagnoses of stroke in the cohort during follow-up were ascertained from the Swedish Hospital Discharge Registry. A total of 4089 stroke cases, including 3159 cerebral infarctions, 435 intracerebral hemorrhages, 148 subarachnoid hemorrhages, and 347 unspecified strokes, were ascertained during 10.2 years of follow-up. The multivariable relative risk (RR) of total stroke for the highest vs. lowest category of total fruit and vegetable consumption was 0.87 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.78-0.97; P for trend?=?0.01). The association was confined to individuals without hypertension (corresponding RR, 0.81; 95 % CI, 0.71-0.93; P for trend?=?0.01). Among individual fruits and vegetable subgroups, inverse associations with total stroke were observed for apples/pears (RR, 0.89; 95 % CI, 0.80-0.98; P for trend?=?0.02) and green leafy vegetables (RR, 0.92; 95 % CI, 0.81-1.04; P?for trend?=?0.03).
This study shows an inverse association of fruit and vegetable consumption with stroke risk. Particularly consumption of apples and pears and green leafy vegetables was inversely associated with stroke.