Comorbidities associated with different levels of total cholesterol in male and female acute ischemic stroke patients

Abstract

Men and women differ in their clinical risk factors with respect to various predictors of severity in acute ischemic stroke (AIS). High cholesterol is a risk factor for AIS and the mechanism by which high cholesterol levels lead to an AIS is well established. However, the specific relationship between demographic, clinical risk factors, total cholesterol, and the resulting gender difference in AIS patients is yet to be investigated. This study recruited AIS patients between January 2000 and June 2016 classified into normal, borderline or high total cholesterol (TC). Normal was defined as ≤200mg/dl, borderline 200 to 239mg/dl and high ≥240mg/dl based on Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) Guidelines for the classification of TC levels. The logistic regression model was used to predict clinical risk factors associated within men and women AIS patients with different levels of TC. A total of 3532 AIS patients presented with normal TC, 760 patients with borderline TC and 427 patients with high TC. The high total cholesterol group was more likely to be women with increasing age (OR=1.028, 95% CI, 1.006-1.052, P=.014), body mass index (BMI) (OR=1.052, 95% CI, 1.004-1.102, P=.033), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) (OR=1.039, 95% CI, 1.019-1.060, P