During this period, 97 participants had a stroke, and 81 people developed dementia. The researchers found that people who drank at least one artificially-sweetened drink a day were three times as likely to have an ischaemic stroke and 2.9 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease.
However, the significant effect on Alzheimer’s risk was not observed when the researchers adjusted for other factors including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cholesterol, waist to hip ratio and whether people have the ApoE4 risk gene.
At the time of publication, Doctor Rosa Sancho, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “As people are becoming more aware of the consequences of a high-sugar diet, many are turning to artificially-sweetened diet fizzy drinks as an alternative to those with lots of sugar.
This interesting new study has pointed to higher rates of dementia in people who drink more artificially-sweetened drinks, but it doesn’t show that these drinks are the cause of this altered risk. When the researchers accounted for other risk factors for Alzheimer’s, such as risk genes, diabetes, heart disease, cholesterol levels and weight, this significant association was lost suggesting that these drinks are not the whole story.”