NYU Langone Logo Cholesterol is conventionally considered to be a significant element involved in predicting or assessing the risk of stroke. However, fluctuations in the levels of triglyceride can be more effective in determining the possibility of a stroke occurrence, especially in post menopausal women, suggests a new study by researchers at the NYU Langone Medical Center.

This study mainly considered ischemic strokes, which account for every 8 out of 10 strokes in the U.S. primarily occur due to clots in the blood caused by cholesterol, which is made of several lipoproteins. Triglyceride is one such lipoprotein, which is now being considered more suitable to determine the risk of this aforementioned issue, rather than cholesterol.

“Every year, hundreds of thousands of people are affected by stroke and there is a tremendous emphasis on identifying people at increased risk. This study revealed that what we’ve been using to evaluate risk all these years actually has little to no predictive value in older women. Triglyceride levels, however, take on a new significance,” informs Jeffrey S. Berger, MD, lead author of this study and assistant professor of medicine and director of Cardiovascular Thrombosis at NYU School of Medicine, part of NYU Langone Medical Center.

The team of researchers assessed data from the Hormones and Biomarkers Predicting Stroke study. They analyzed the reports of 972 women who suffered strokes against a control group with the same number of participants. At the beginning of this investigation, these subjects had donated blood samples which were then examined for lipid biomarkers. Here it was observed that high triglyceride levels were exhibited by women who were at risk of developing strokes.

The study has been reported in the online journal, Stroke.