People who suffer from cardiovascular disease are more prone to memory loss, new research has indicated.

Treating cardiovascular conditions may help to stave off dementia

People who suffer from cardiovascular disease are more prone to memory loss, new research has indicated.

Scientists from the University of Glasgow found that people who had high blood pressure, diabetes or coronary heart disease performed worse on tests of memory, reasoning and reaction time.

The study also found that having more than one of the conditions worsened the problem.

Heart disease and diabetes linked to memory loss

The study, published today in the European Heart Journal, suggests that tackling the conditions could delay dementia and cognitive decline. The university’s Institute of Health and Wellbeing believes that the findings are significant because a rising number of people are living with coronary heart disease and diabetes as obesity levels rise.

Donald Lyall, public health research associate at the university, said: “Our findings highlight the potential to protect against cognitive decline by addressing other conditions such as heart disease. The reduction in mental test scores was relatively small for individuals but may expand as people age.

“Given rising levels of multi-morbidity, where people are living with more than one chronic disease, and public health concerns regarding cognitive decline, our work has important implications for future research.”

The researchers studied nearly half a million participants from the UK Biobank, using data taken between 2006 and 2010. Data was divided by medical history and the number of cardiometabolic diseases the subjects had. Scores on tests of reasoning, reaction time and memory were then compared.

Previous research has made the link between heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cognitive abilities but the effect of having more than one of these diseases has not been researched until now. Dr Lyall said: “Having one disease was associated with poorer performance on all the cognitive tests; but having two diseases was worse and three worse still, particularly for reaction times and reasoning.

“Importantly our analysis took account of lots of things which might have resulted in an erroneous result, such as medication usage, gender, age, deprivation, education levels, depression, smoking history, alcohol intake and obesity.”

Last month experts from the University of Edinburgh claimed that environmental factors such as air pollution and lack of vitamin D could contribute to the risk of developing dementia. The condition is known to be associated with genetics and lifestyle factors such as high blood pressure, smoking and diabetes but about a third of a person’s risk of developing it cannot yet be accounted for.

Researchers believe that factors such as traffic fumes and lack of sunshine could be the missing link, after conducting the first major review into research on risks caused by our surroundings. However, the team insisted that there was not enough evidence to prove that these factors directly caused the neurological condition, which affects about 90,000 Jocks.