14 DAY TRIAL // According to the conclusions of a new study by German investigators at the University of Würzburg, it would seem that post-menopausal women who suffer from heart diseases have a much higher chance of experiencing some form of decreased brain functions, such as various types of dementias.
Details of the investigation were published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. The author of the paper was clinical fellow Bernhard Haring, MD, MPH, who is based at the university's Department of Internal Medicine I and Comprehensive Heart Failure Center.
For this research, scientists looked at data covering 6,500 women in the United States, aged between 65 and 79. Test subjects with heart or vascular diseases were around 30 percent more likely to suffer from cognitive decline associated with dementia than their peers with a healthy heart, e! Science News reports.
“Our study provides further new evidence that this relationship does exist, especially among postmenopausal women. And many different types of heart disease or vascular disease are associated with declining brain function,” Haring explains. It thus becomes “very important to adequately manage heart disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes,” he concludes.