Heart disease in middle age has greater impact on women’s mental health

By Mark Waghorn via SWNS

Cardiovascular disease in middle age has a greater impact on women's mental health, according to new research.

Men are more prone to heart problems, stroke and risk factors such as diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking.

But a decline in thinking and memory skills more than doubles in female patients, say scientists.

Eating plenty of fruit, vegetables and oily fish and doing more exercise could reduce their risk of developing Alzheimer's.

Lead author Professor Michelle Mielke, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said: "Our results show cardiovascular conditions and risk factors were associated with midlife cognitive decline.

"But the association is stronger for women."

With no cure in sight, there's an increasing focus on lifestyle changes that can stave off dementia.

Prof Mielke said: "Specifically, we found certain cardiovascular conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and dyslipidemia - which is abnormally high levels of fats in the blood - had stronger associations with cognitive decline in women compared to men."

The study published in the journal Neurology tracked 1,857 dementia-free individuals in the US aged 50 to 69.

Every 15 months over an average of three years they were given a clinical evaluation.

It included nine tests of memory, language, executive function and spatial skills combined to calculate a composite cognitive score.

The effect of cardiovascular illnesses on brain function was greatest in women.

For example, results for those with heart disease reduced by over twice as much in women compared to men.

Diabetes, heart disease and abnormally high levels of harmful blood fats were also only linked to declining language abilities in women.

Prof Mielke said: "More research is needed to examine sex differences in the relationships between cardiovascular risk factors and specific biomarkers of brain disease like white matter hyperintensities, areas of dead tissue and overall white matter integrity in midlife.

"That may help us better understand the sex-specific mechanisms, by which the cardiovascular conditions and risk factors contribute to cognitive impairment in both women and men."

Overall 1,465 (79%) of participants had at least one cardiovascular condition or risk factor - 83 and 75 percent of the men and women, respectively.

The number of dementia cases globally is set to triple to over 150 million by 2050 because of aging populations.

Cardiovascular disease is the world's number one killer - claiming 17 million lives each year.