Blood clots: Risk factors may include over-consumption of diet drink

In fact, the findings showed that compared with women who consumed diet drinks less than once a week or not at all, women who consumed to or more per day were 23 percent more likely to have a stroke.

What’s more, they were 31 percent more likely to have a clot-caused ischaemic stroke.

Professor Whiteley noted, however, that “although the association between ASBs and stroke or coronary artery disease has been published more than once in the medical literature, it is very difficult to prove that the drinks are the cause of the observed heart and brain events.”

He continued: “Some doctors have suggested that the results might be due to other factors in the sort of women who were studied and who choose to have ASBs rather than other drinks, rather than the effect of the ASBs themselves.”