A person’s stroke risk could be influenced by his or her exposure to sunlight, new research from the University of Alabama shows. According to HealthDay News, people who don’t see the sun as often are at a greater risk for stroke.
“We hear a lot about how the sun may be bad for us, in terms of skin cancer for example, but this examination of sunlight exposure indicates that there may be some positive results related to being in the sun,” said study co-author Leslie McClure. “The bottom line is that sunlight may be both a friend and a foe with respect to health.”
For the study, McClure and her team looked at data from an ongoing study involving more than 30,000 men and women over the age of 45. Of these, researchers focused on 16,500 who had no risk of stroke or heart disease at the beginning of the study. After five years, 351 people in this group had experienced a stroke. The team then compared this information to geographical monthly sunlight patterns in their area.
After ordering the group from most sunlight exposure to the least, researchers were able to determine that those in the bottom half of sun exposure had a stroke risk that was 1.6 times higher than those who saw the sun more often.
According to HealthDay, however, reasons for this correlation still have yet to be discovered.
“We really don’t yet understand the mechanism behind it,” McClure said.
The team suggested a possible link to vitamin D, which is found in sun rays, but caution that it is still an “exploratory analysis.”
McClure and her colleagues are set to present their research next Tuesday at a meeting of the American Stroke Association in New Orleans.
