- Black women with heart health issues may experience earlier cognitive decline, according to a new study.
- The research was conducted over a 20-year peroid with cognitive assessments completed every one to two years throughout an almost ten-year follow-up period.
- Researchers reported that processing speed declined in Black women during midlife compared to white women but working memory did not decline in either group.
Black women with poor cardiovascular health might have an elevated risk of early cognitive decline, according to a new
Researchers examined the cognition and working memory of 765 women enrolled in the Chicago site of the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN).
The participants included 363 Black and 402 white women between the ages of 42 and 52. None of the women had cardiovascular disease.
Cognition and working memory assessments were conducted annually or biennially over a maximum of 20 years, with an average follow-up of nearly 10 years.
The researchers measured cardiovascular health based on the American Heart Association’s Life’s Essential 8 checklist. The eight categories are blood pressure, body mass index, glucose, cholesterol, smoking, physical activity, diet, and sleep.
“A large body of research supports the relationship between cardiovascular health and cognitive functioning,” said Dr. José Morales, a vascular neurologist and neurointerventional surgeon at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute in California who was not involved in the research. “The results of this study lend further support to this relationship and the urgent need to address these risk factors early.”
“While the study attempted to control for differences in baseline demographic data, drawing conclusions from phenotypic racial differences misses a myriad of factors that can lead to misinterpretation,” Morales told Medical News Today. “Race as a factor for these differences has previously…
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