TUESDAY, April 28, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- For older adults, deterioration in cognitive function is seen prior to cardiovascular disease (CVD) events, according to a study published online April 20 in JAMA Network Open.
Swarna Vishwanath, Ph.D., from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues compared the cognitive trajectories of older adults preceding an incident CVD event to those of matched controls without an event in a nested case-control study. Data were extracted from a prospective cohort of older, community-dwelling individuals (aged 65 years and older) in Australia and the United States with no history of CVD from the Aspirin in Reducing Events in the Elderly randomized clinical trial and the extension observational study.
A total of 1,934 CVD events occurred among 19,114 participants over 11 years. Of the case patients, 1,887 with adjudicated CVD events were matched to 7,548 controls. The researchers found that compared with those without CVD, individuals with incident CVD events had lower cognitive function starting three to eight years before the event. In the years prior to the CVD event, faster declines were seen in global cognition, episodic memory, processing speed, and verbal fluency compared with controls. Faster declines were also seen in composite global cognition and executive function scores, but not memory. For fatal coronary heart disease, stroke, and hospitalization for heart failure, similar cognitive trajectories were seen, but this pattern was not seen for nonfatal myocardial infarction.
"These findings underscore the importance of early cognitive monitoring in older adults and support further research into cognitive trajectories before CVD onset, particularly across diverse populations," the authors write.
One author disclosed ties to the biopharmaceutical industry.
