A recent US study has shown that that about 60 per cent of the protection that women gain against stroke and heart disease is derived from its effect on just a few particular risk factors.

The research, published in the journal Circulation, used data from 27,000 women who partook in the Women’s Health Study. With an average age of 55 years, the participants’ cardiovascular risk factors and exercise levels were monitored for 11 years.

Those women who exercised the most were found to be 40 per cent less likely to suffer stroke or heart attack than the participants who did little or no exercise.

Lead author Dr Samia Mora, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, said, ‘Regular physical activity is enormously beneficial in preventing heart attack and stroke. We found that even modest changes in risk factors for heart disease and stroke, especially those related to inflammation/hemostasis and blood pressure, can have a profound impact on preventing clinical events. This study is the first to examine the importance of a variety of known risk factors in explaining how physical activity prevents heart disease and stroke’.

The researchers found that exercise-linked changes in inflammatory and hemostatic biomarkers - fibrinogen, C-reactive protein and intracellular adhesion molecule-1 - had the largest impact, lowering heart attack and stroke risk by one third.

‘Inflammatory and hemostatic factors as a group have overlapping functions and roles and, in our study, had the biggest effect in mediating exercise-related cardio protection, more so than blood pressure or body weight’ said Mora.

An improvement in blood pressure (27 per cent lowered risk) was the second most important exercise-related benefit. Body mass index (BMI), lipids (blood fats), glucose abnormalities, kidney function, and homocysteine were also risk factors which saw noticeable improvements in exercisers.