Arrhythmia and dementia

Link between dementia and arrhythmia confirmed

Sergey Kolenov, Hi-tech+

According to a number of studies, atrial fibrillation significantly increases the risk of dementia in the elderly. A team of Korean scientists from Yonsei University, whose work is described in a press release The European Society of Cardiology undertook to test this connection with the help of a large-scale analysis.

Article by Kim et al. Risk of dementia in stroke-free patients diagnosed with atrial fibrillation: data from a population-based cohort published in European Heart Journal – VM.

For six years, experts collected health data on 262,611 people over 60. At the beginning of the study, all the participants were relatively healthy and did not suffer from either arrhythmia or dementia, but then some of them developed one of these diseases – or both at once.

Analysis of the information received showed that among 10,000 volunteers who had arrhythmia, the risk of dementia was 24.4%. Those who did not suffer from heart problems were twice as likely to have dementia – 14.4%.  This pattern persisted even when people who had suffered a stroke were removed from the calculations.

It also turned out that arrhythmia affects different types of dementia in different ways. For example, she doubled the risk of vascular dementia, and increased the likelihood of Alzheimer's disease by 30%. At the same time, oral anticoagulants intended for the treatment of arrhythmia allowed to slightly reduce the risk of neurodegeneration.

Thus, Korean scientists were able not only to confirm the conclusions of previous studies conducted in Europe and the United States, but also to demonstrate that the link between arrhythmia and dementia exists in Asian populations.

However, the exact mechanism of this connection remains unknown. Neurodegenerative diseases develop over the years, so it's hard to believe that an arrhythmia acquired after 60 can have such a rapid effect on the brain. Most likely, we are not talking about the fact that arrhythmia causes dementia, but about the common source of these diseases – for example, inflammation or oxidative stress.

Arrhythmia medications are not the only cardiological medications that affect the risk of dementia. According to a recent study by German scientists, patients taking medications for hypertension are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. Although these drugs cannot completely stop the development of the disease, they can slow down the loss of cognitive abilities.

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