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 Highly educated people who reported noticeable lapses in memory were
39 percent more likely than those without lapses to have a stroke
within the next 12 years, researchers report in the journal Stroke.
“Persons who complain of cognitive/memory complaints should be
monitored not only because of the possibility of incipient dementia,
but also for an increased risk of stroke,” Dr. Arfan Ikram from
Erasmus University Rotterdam, who led the study, said in an email to
Reuters Health.
“Important are memory complaints that are more than usual and
interfere in one's daily functioning," he added. “This is especially
true for highly (educated) people.”
For the new study, Ikram and his colleagues used data from 9,152
people who were at least 55 years old. Between 1990 and 1993, or
2000 and 2001, the participants answered questions about memory
lapses and completed tests that measure cognitive function.
By 2012, there were about 1,200 strokes among the participants.
The researchers found that people who reported memory lapses were
about 20 percent more likely overall to have strokes during the
follow-up period.
But that link was isolated among those who reported the most
education, meaning university or advanced vocational training. With
memory lapses, their stroke risk was 39 percent higher than people
without the lapses.
Strokes also tended to occur earlier in people with higher levels of
education, the researchers found.
Broader scores on cognitive functioning were not tied to stroke
risk, however.
The study can’t explain why the association between memory lapses
and stroke only appeared in highly educated people.
The researchers write that it could be that highly educated people
have more so-called cognitive reserve, which prevents them from
noticing memory problems until their risk of stroke is more
advanced.
Instead of strokes or memory lapses causing each other, one expert
not involved with the new study said it’s likely that memory
complaints are the result of a condition that also increases the
risk of stroke, such as high blood pressure.
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“As pointed out by the authors, it’s likely the case that in
selected people that they have some memory challenges and that is
not perhaps directly related to future risk of stroke, but related
to other risk factors like high blood pressure,” said Dr. Robert
Brown, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Brown cautioned that the new report doesn’t mean people should worry
if they notice lapses in memory, such as briefly forgetting keys or
names.
“Every one of us that have a subjective memory complaint will not
have a future stroke,” he told Reuters Health. “By no means is it a
100 percent connection between subjective memory complaints and
future stroke.”
Instead, he said people who are having memory problems that start to
affect their lives should see their doctors – especially those with
high levels of education.
“And their provider may want to make sure their blood pressure is
appropriately treated along with any other risk factors that may put
them at future risk of stroke,” Brown said.
Ikram said the results likely apply to other populations even though
the participants in the current study were mostly white. More
research is needed to confirm that, as well as to see if the results
apply to people in less wealthy nations.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1is8tGh Stroke, online December 11, 2014.
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