Background: The association between blood pressure (BP) variability and stroke outcome is controversial, and there are few studies that have focused on the impact of BP variability in diabetic patients with stroke. Therefore, we aimed to examine the impact of BP variability on cardiovascular outcome in diabetic and nondiabetic patients with stroke. Methods: A total of 373 ischemic stroke patients with large artery atherosclerosis were recruited and followed up. Ambulatory BP monitoring was performed in all patients and divided according to the 25th and 75th percentiles interval of SD of daytime systolic BP (SBP). Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox regression were used to assess the relationship between BP variability and cardiovascular outcomes including stroke recurrence, vascular events and cardiovascular death. Results: The 339 patients were included in the final analysis. During an average follow-up of 19.0 +/- 5.1 months (.6-26.8 months), 69 (20.4%) cardiovascular events occurred in all patients. Kaplan-Meier analysis found that there were no differences in cardiovascular events-free survival among the different BP variability groups in diabetic patients (P = .995); however, nondiabetic patients with greater BP variability showed a lesser cardiovascular events-free survival (P = .039). Through Cox regression we found the SD of daytime SBP (hazard ratio 1.103; 95% CI 1.011 - 1.203) was associated with cardiovascular outcomes in nondiabetic patients with stroke. Conclusions: We show that SBP variability is associated with cardiovascular outcomes in stroke patients without diabetes, but we didn't find a correlation between SBP variability and cardiovascular outcomes in stroke patients with diabetes.