Genetic Predisposition, Fruit Intake and Incident Stroke: A Prospective Chinese Cohort Study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the association between fruit intake and stroke risk considering the genetic predisposition. We used data from 34,871 participants from the project of Prediction for Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Risk in China (China-PAR project) from 2007 to 2020. A polygenic risk score comprising 534 genetic variants associated with stroke and its related factors was constructed to categorize individuals into low, intermediate, and high genetic risk groups. The associations of genetic and fruit intake with incident stroke were assessed by the Cox proportional hazard regression. We documented 2586 incident strokes during a median follow-up of 11.2 years. Compared with fruit intake < 200 g/week, similar relative risk reductions in stroke with adherence to fruit intake > 100 g/day across the genetic risk categories were observed (28-32%), but the absolute risk reductions were relatively larger in the highest genetic risk group (p for trend = 0.03). In comparison to those with a fruit intake < 200 g/week, those with a fruit intake >100 g/day in the low, intermediate, and high genetic risk groups had an average of 1.45 (95% CI, 0.61-2.31), 2.12 (1.63-2.59), and 2.19 (1.13-3.22) additional stroke-free years at aged 35, respectively. Our findings suggest that individuals with a high genetic risk could gain more absolute risk reductions and stroke-free years than those with a low genetic risk from increasing fruit intake for the stroke primary prevention.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the association between fruit intake and stroke risk, considering genetic predisposition. The findings suggest that increasing fruit intake can reduce stroke risk in individuals irrespective of their genetic risk, with greater absolute risk reductions observed in those with a high genetic risk.