New research suggests memory lapses among the highly educated could indicate an elevated risk of stroke.
The findings suggest even slight memory lapses in this population should be looked at as a risk factor for stroke, the American Heart Association reported.
"Studies have shown how stroke causes memory complaints," said Arfan Ikram, M.D., associate professor of neuroepidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. "Given the shared underlying vascular pathology, we posed the reverse question: 'Do memory complaints indicate an increased risk of strokes?'"
To make their findings researchers looked at 9,152 participants in the Rotterdam Study who were 55 years of age or older and had completed a subjective memory complaints questionnaire as well as the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). During the study 1,134 strokes occurred: 663 were ischemic, 99 hemorrhagic and 372 unspecified.
The research team found memory complaints were associated with a higher stroke risk, but a higher MMSE score was not. Those with memory complaints had a 39 percent higher risk of stroke if they had a higher level of educations. The study results were the same regardless of gender.
The participants were grouped into two categories: "low education - primary education only; intermediate education - primary education plus some higher education, lower vocational education, intermediate vocational education, or general secondary education; and high education - higher vocational education or university training."
"Given the role of education in revealing subjective memory complaints, we investigated the same association but in three separate groups: low education, medium education and high education," Ikram said. "We found that the association of memory complaints with stroke was strongest among people with the highest education. If in future research we can confirm this, then I would like to assess whether people who complain about changes in their memory should be considered primary targets for further risk assessment and prevention of stroke."
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Stroke.
