March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Heart risks can impair mental abilities

ORONO — Not only do untreated high blood pressure and diabetes increase the risk of a heart attack or stroke, they may impair mental function, according to a team from the University of Maine that analyzed data from two long-running studies.

The UMaine psychologists, working with researchers from the State University of New York at Syracuse and the Framingham Heart Study, found an association between major risk factors for stroke and heart disease and age-related decline in cognitive abilities.

The findings provided strong evidence that high blood pressure and diabetes are associated with an accelerated decline in cognitive functioning with advancing age, the team said.

The likelihood of cognitive decline doubled when both high blood pressure and diabetes were present at the same time, and smoking and obesity further increased the risk, the team said.

The team also found that untreated high blood pressure in midlife can affect cognitive function later in life.

“It appears that as the number of risk factors goes up, cognitive functioning goes down,” said Merrill Elias, a UMaine psychology professor and research professor from Boston University.

The Maine-Syracuse Studies of Hypertension and Cognitive Functioning was started in 1975. The studies have been funded every year since 1977 and have data from 2,000 people.

In 1991, the Maine team obtained data from the Framingham Heart Study on a large sample of people who had never been treated for hypertension to obtain more data on diabetes, obesity and smoking.

Elias said the researchers came to the same conclusion whether using the measures from the Framingham Heart Study or the Maine-Syracuse study.

“Decline in cognition is strongest with high blood pressure and diabetes and less strong with the other two factors. Nevertheless, the relationship still holds,” he said.

Others on the Maine team include Michael Robbins, a senior research associate and psychology professor at UMaine, and Penelope Elias, a UMaine professor and researcher at Boston University.

As their sample population grows older, the Maine team intends to pursue the relationship between reductions in cognitive functioning and the eventual onset of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.


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