Ten metabolites from seven prospective cohort studies were found to be associated with risk of stroke. The studies included 1,791 incident stroke events among 38,797 participants. Independent of traditional risk factors including hypertension, diabetes, smoking, and body mass index, amino acid histidine (hazard ratio [HR] per standard deviation [SD] = 0.90), glycolysis-related metabolite pyruvate (HR per SD = 1.09), acute phase reaction marker glycoprotein acetyls (HR per SD = 1.09), cholesterol in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) 2 and several other lipoprotein particles were associated with risk of stroke. When focusing on incident ischemic stroke, a significant association was observed with phenylalanine (HR per SD = 1.12) as well as total and free cholesterol in large HDL particles. However, the biological mechanisms underlying these associations are subject to further studies. Source: https://n.neurology.org/