Early Heart Disease Diagnosis Linked to Higher Dementia Risk
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People who get diagnosed with heart disease by the time they reach early middle age may be more likely to develop dementia later in life, a new study suggests.
For the study, scientists examined detailed medical data on more than 432,000 dementia-free adults who were 57 years old on average, including more than 50,000 people with heart disease. After a follow-up period of about 13 years, a total of 5,876 people got diagnosed with dementia, including 2,540 who developed Alzheimer’s disease and 1,220 who developed vascular dementia, a common form of memory loss caused by disrupted blood flow to the brain.
Overall, people with heart disease were 36 percent more likely to develop dementia, 13 percent more apt to get Alzheimer’s disease, and 78 percent more susceptible to vascular dementia, according to study results published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
People diagnosed with heart disease before age 45 were most at risk. They were 71 percent more likely to develop dementia, 75 percent more likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, and 65 percent more likely to develop vascular dementia.
Premature Coronary Heart Disease
“This shows the huge detrimental influence of premature coronary heart disease onset on brain health,” says senior study author Fanfan Zheng, PhD, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College in Beijing.
“Coronary heart disease has previously been associated with dementia risk in older adults,” Dr. Zheng adds. “However, this is believed to be the first large-scale study examining whether the age of coronary heart disease onset may impact the risk of developing dementia later in life.”
The study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how heart disease might directly compromise brain health or cause dementia.
However, atherosclerosis — an accumulation of fats and cholesterol in artery walls that, over time, reduces blood flow — may be a culprit, says Andrew Budson, MD, coauthor of Seven Steps to Managing Your Aging Memory and chief of cognitive behavioral neurology at VA Boston Healthcare System, and a professor of neurology at Boston University.
“The same processes that lead to coronary heart disease — atherosclerosis building up and narrowing blood vessels to the heart — can lead to cerebrovascular disease, that is, atherosclerosis building up and narrowing blood vessels to the brain,” says Dr. Budson, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
Factors That Compromise Brain Health
Several factors that increase the risk of heart disease — including smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes — can also compromise brain health, Budson adds.
Heart disease can also disrupt the normal beating of the heart, causing blood to collect in pockets of the heart that aren’t pumping properly, Budson says. This can lead to reduced blood flow to the brain, as well as strokes, which both can contribute to dementia.
The good news is that there’s plenty people can do to minimize their risk of heart disease when they’re younger and decrease their odds of dementia as they age, says Nada El Husseini, MD, an associate professor of neurology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
That’s because lifestyle habits like adopting a heart-healthy diet, exercising regularly, and getting plenty of sleep don’t just help lower the risk of events like heart attacks and strokes — they also minimize the risk of dementia, Dr. Husseini says.
“To optimize their cardiovascular health, people are encouraged to adopt a health-healthy lifestyle,” Husseini says. “If people do get heart disease, adopting a heart-healthy lifestyle, continued engagement in socially and cognitively stimulating activities, and optimizing psychological health may help in decreasing the risk of dementia.”
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