Fish consumption and risk of stroke and its subtypes: accumulative evidence from a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: To provide a reliable assessment of the hypothesized association of fish consumption with stroke risk accumulatively, an updated meta-analysis of published prospective cohort studies was conducted. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Prospective cohort studies through April 2012 in peer-reviewed journals indexed in MEDLINE and EMBASE were selected. Additional information was retrieved through Google or a search of the reference list in relevant articles. The main outcome measure was the weighted hazards ratio (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence interval (CI) for incident stroke according to fish consumption using a random-effects model. RESULTS: A database was derived from 16 eligible studies (19 cohorts), including 402 127 individuals (10 568 incident cases) with an average 12.8 years of follow-up. Compared with those who never consumed fish or ate fish