Copyright Medical News Today
“Damage to the brain seen in people with dementia accumulates slowly over the decades before symptoms develop. Control of risk factors common to both heart disease, stroke, and dementia in middle age, such as high blood pressure, may slow or even stop the development of dementia as well as cardiovascular disease. We now need to carry out studies to investigate how well troponin levels in the blood can predict future dementia risk. Our early results suggest that troponin could become an important component of a risk score to predict future probability of dementia.” — Eric Brunner, PhD “This study found that people with higher levels of cardiac troponin — a marker of possible heart damage — in the blood were more likely to develop dementia many years in the future. While the exact nature of the cause-and-effect is not entirely clear, the findings illustrate the close relationship between heart health and brain health and suggest that the same risk factors may underlie both problems.” — Cheng-Han Chen, MD “Damage to the heart can, in turn, cause damage to the brain, and the factors that cause damage to the heart, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, unhealthy diet patterns, and lack of physical activity, also cause damage to the brain. It is important to better understand the link between the two to try to prevent heart damage to optimize brain health and lower the chances of dementia.” — Shadi Yaghi, MD, FAHA
