(HealthDay News) — Los stroke survivors have a risk 80 percent higher dementiacompared to people who have never had a stroke, a new study finds.
About 19 percent of people who had had a stroke developed dementia during an average follow-up of six years, compared with just 13 percent of those who had not had a stroke, the researchers reported in the Oct. 4 issue. december magazine Neurology.
“Importantly, our research also found that the “The risk of dementia after the stroke was twice the risk of suffering a second stroke.”said researcher Dr. Raed Joundi, an assistant professor of medicine at the McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
“Although much of the research has focused on reducing the risk of a second stroke, our findings make clear that more research is also needed on developing interventions to help prevent dementia after the stroke,” Joundi added in a press release from the magazine.
In the study, researchers looked at strokes caused by a obstruction of blood flow to the brain or why bleeding in the brain.
The team identified almost 175,000 stroke survivors who lived in Ontario, and paired them with the same number of people who had not suffered a stroke. The average age of the study participants was 69 years old.
They found that there were about 3.3 cases of dementia per 100 person-years among stroke survivors, compared with 1.9 cases among people without stroke. Person-years represent the number of people in the study and the amount of time each person was followed.
People with stroke had a higher risk 76 percent higher dementia after taking into account other risk factors such as agehe sexthe hypertension and the diabetesshow the results.
The risk also changed over time, and was highest immediately after a stroke, the researchers found.
Stroke survivors were at risk 2.5 times higher rate of dementia within one year After stroke, a 50 percent increase in risk at five years and a 30 percent increase in risk at 20 years showed the result.
“As dementia rates increase worldwide, and more people survive stroke, understanding how stroke contributes to dementia risk is of great importance,” Joundi said.
More information: The National Institute on Aging has more information about vascular dementia.
SOURCE: American Academy of Neurology, press release, December 4, 2024
*Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter ©The New York Times
