Health aNd Fitness Guide

Mammograms, which help detect breast cancer, may also help identify women who are at risk for strokes. Benign arterial calcifications found in blood vessels of the breasts were more commonly found on the mammograms of women who had suffered a stroke. Researchers at the University of Missouri looked at 793 mammograms of women aged 40 to 90 and found that 86 of them, about 10 per cent, had the calcifications. And 115 of the 204 women in the group who had had stroke had the calcifications. Previous studies showed a link between benign calcifications and the risk of diabetes, heart disease and stroke.