01 February,2012 10:17 AM IST | | AFP
If you imbibe diet soda daily, a new study announced on Tuesday warns that you could be at increased risk of a stroke or heart attack.
Data were analyzed from 2,564 participants in the NIH-funded Northern Manhattan Study, with researchers examining how often individuals drank soft drinks -- diet and regular -- and the number of strokes and heart attacks that occurred over a 10-year period.
Findings were published on January 26 in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
In other recent research, a 10-year study from the University of Texas in the United States revealed that people who drank two or more diet sodas a day gained 70 percent more abdominal fat than those in the study who didn't drink diet soda.
Abdominal fat is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer, as well as other chronic conditions, the researchers said.
Another study from the same university found that the artificial sweetener aspartame raised blood sugar levels in mice prone to diabetes.