[Association between fruit consumption and stroke in adults in Qingdao: a prospective study]

Objective: To understand the fruit consumption of adults of Qingdao and examine the association between fruit consumption and stroke. Methods: We analyzed baseline data and stroke incidence of the participants who were aged 30-79 years and had been enrolled into the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study from Qingdao city. Cox proportional hazards regression model was conducted to estimate the association of fruit consumption with risk of stroke. Results: A total of 35 509 participants were investgated in the baseline survey. Ratio of male to female was 1∶1.27, and the average age was (50.3±10.2) years. Respondents with higher frequency of fruit consumption were younger, more women, with higher education level and higher income (P<0.05). A total of 1 011 new cases of stroke were observed, with a stroke incidence of 387.63/100 000 person-years. Multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that fruit consumption had a protective effect on stroke incidence. Compared to the respondents who never consumed fruit, respondents who consumed fruit more than 4 days per week had a 44% lower risk of stroke incidence (HR=0.56, 95%CI: 0.50-0.62, P<0.05), and the risk reduced by 46% (HR=0.54, 95%CI: 0.46-0.64, P<0.05) and 42% (HR=0.58, 95%CI: 0.52-0.69, P<0.05) in male and female, respectively. Further adjustment for WC, BMI, SBP and random blood glucose did not change the association. Conclusion: Increasing fruit consumption can effectively decrease the risk of stroke. People should increase fruit consumption advisably to set up reasonable and healthy dietary habits.