Common type of heart rhythm disorder may increase the risk of developing dementia or dementia. But the treatment of arrhythmia and its consequences reduces the probability, according to the journal Neurology.
We are talking about atrial brillation or atrial fibrillation. At this violation of cardiac rhythm of the myocardial fibers of the Atria reduced disordered. Atrial contractions become less effective, the heart beats faster, the rhythm is broken.
The study showed that atrial fibrillation increases the overall risk of dementia by 40% and the risk of dementia of vascular origin by about 90%. But in people with arrhythmia, but receiving treatment with anticoagulants, the risk of dementia is reduced by 60%.
We found that suffering from ventricular fibrillation may experience more rapid impairment in cognitive abilities such as memory and thinking, and have a higher risk of dementia, says the study’s author Mozhu Ding (Mozhu Ding), doctoral candidate of Centre for the study of aging at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Many patients with atrial fibrillation receive anticoagulant, medicines that reduce blood clotting and warning of blood clots in the blood vessels and heart. This treatment significantly reduces the risk of dementia.
To obtain these results, researchers examined data on 2685 participants in the Swedish study of aging (Swedish National Study on Aging and Care) for six years. 9% of them at the beginning of the study was atrial fibrillation. 22% of patients with this arrhythmia, not taking anticoagulants developed dementia. In the case of reception anticoagulant this figure decreased to 11%.
People with atrial fibrillation unable to tolerate strokes, micro-strokes, which significantly increase the risk of dementia. Also likely fibrillation slows cerebral blood flow, causing brain ischemia, which in turn leads to cognitine worse, told Ding about the relationship of arrhythmia and dementia.
This is not the first study on this topic in 2017, it was shown that delaying anticoagulation therapy for arrhythmia increased the risk of dementia.
Ukrainian Andrei