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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Results of a study in the
European Heart Journal indicate an association between heart
disease and lower thinking or "cognitive" performance in
middle-aged adults.
Using data from the Whitehall II study, Dr. Archana
Singh-Manoux, of INSERM, Cedex, France, and colleagues examined
the association between heart disease and cognition in 10,308
subjects who were 35 to 55 years of age when the study began in
the late 1980s. Heart attacks and other related heart problems
were recorded up to 2004, at which point 5837 subjects had
completed six cognitive tests.
Men and women who developed heart disease scored lower on a
number of cognitive tests, particularly those involving
reasoning and vocabulary, than did their peers without heart
disease. Moreover, there was evidence, at least in men, that
the longer the heart disease was present, the greater the
impairment in thinking.
"Our results suggest that even among middle-aged
individuals, heart disease is associated with poor cognitive
performance with some evidence to suggest a stronger effect
among those with longest standing (disease)," Singh-Manoux and
colleagues conclude.
However, these findings are unable to answer the question
of whether heart disease leads to impaired cognition or vice
versa, the authors note.
SOURCE: European Heart Journal, July 23rd online, 2008.
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