by Todd Neale for MedPage Today:

Depression appears to be a risk factor for stroke among middle-age women, even after accounting for other variables, an Australian study showed.

Among women in their late 40s and early 50s who were followed for up to 12 years, meeting criteria for depression was associated with more than double the likelihood of having a stroke (OR 2.41, 95% CI 1.78-3.27), according to Caroline Jackson, PhD, and Gita Mishra, PhD, of the University of Queensland in Australia.

The relationship was partly explained by age, socioeconomic status, lifestyle, and physiological factors, but remained statistically significant after adjustment for those variables (OR 1.94, 95% CI 1.37- 2.74), they reported online in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

by Business Standard:

Scientists have developed a new brain-imaging tool that along with stroke risk assessment can identify signs of cognitive decline early on in individuals who don’t yet show symptoms of dementia.

The connection between stroke risk and cognitive decline has been well established. Individuals with higher stroke risk, as measured by factors like high blood pressure, have traditionally performed worse on tests of memory, attention and abstract reasoning.

The new study demonstrated that not only stroke risk, but also the burden of plaques and tangles, as measured by a University of California, Los Angeles brain scan, may influence cognitive decline. The imaging tool used in the study was developed at UCLA and reveals early evidence of amyloid beta “plaques” and neurofibrillary tau “tangles” in the brain – the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

by Michael Smith for MedPage Today:

Standard risk prediction tools for heart disease and stroke are better at predicting declining mental powers than a specific dementia risk score, researchers reported.

In a long-running cohort study, higher risks on the widely used Framingham cardiovascular disease and stroke scores were strongly associated with declines on four out of five cognitive tests, according to Sara Kaffashian, PhD, of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, and colleagues.

On the other hand, higher risk on the recently proposed Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia (CAIDE) score was less strongly associated with declines and only on three of the five tests, Kaffashian and colleagues reported in the April 2 issue ofNeurology.

All of the risk scores predict cognitive decline starting in late middle age, Kaffashian said in a statement, but the Framingham tests may have an edge in prevention.

by Red Orbit:

The origin of an innate ability the brain has to protect itself from damage that occurs in stroke has been explained for the first time.

The Oxford University researchers hope that harnessing this inbuilt biological mechanism, identified in rats, could help in treating stroke and preventing other neurodegenerative diseases in the future.

‘We have shown for the first time that the brain has mechanisms that it can use to protect itself and keep brain cells alive,’ says Professor Alastair Buchan, Head of the Medical Sciences Division and Dean of the Medical School at Oxford University, who led the work.

by Daily Rx:

When a patient suffers a stroke, he or she has a significant risk of having another one down the road. Knowing which symptoms can predict the second stroke can help docs and families prepare.

A recent study discovered that people who developed dementia after having an ischemic stroke were at greater risk of having another stroke. Compared to those without dementia, stroke patients with dementia were about two times more likely to have another stroke.

The authors concluded that post-stroke dementia is a risk factor for future stroke. Knowing this risk may help doctors and patients prevent more strokes.

Patients with post-stroke dementia may develop memory and thinking problems within a year after having a stroke.

by Jaimie Dalessio for Everyday Health:

The protective power of antioxidants against stroke and dementia may have less to do with your total dietary intake of antioxidants and more to do with the specific foods that contribute to your antioxidant level, new research suggests.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston and Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam in the Netherlands analyzed health and dietary information on 5,395 people aged 55 and older who were part of the long-term Rotterdam Study of medical conditions and other factors in older adults.

Study author Elizabeth E. Devore, ScD, now with Brigham and Women’s and Harvard Medical School, says she and her colleagues at Erasmus came at the Rotterdam research data with a new question: “Is it really about individual nutrients for dementia and stroke, or would it be important to look overall at the total capacity of the diet in terms of antioxidants?”

by Charles Bankhead for MedPage Today:

Heart disease in older women tripled their likelihood of mild cognitive impairment, data from a large cohort study showed.

The association between heart disease and cognitive function was limited to the non-amnestic subtype of impairment, which involves cognitive domains other than memory. Among women with cardiac disease, the hazard ratio for non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment was 3.07 versus women without cardiac disease (95% CI, 1.58 to 5.99), according to Rosebud Roberts, MB, ChB, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and co-authors.

In contrast, men with cardiac disease had a nonsignificant 1.16 hazard ratio compared with men who did not have cardiac disease (95% CI 0.68 to 1.99), they reported online inJAMA Neurology.

by Andy Coghlan for New Scientist:

Researchers led by David Kleinfeld of the University of California, San Diego, induced tiny strokes in rats by blocking blood vessels called arterioles, stopping blood from reaching capillaries deeper in the brain.

Blocking just a single arteriole caused cell death in all directions for hundreds of micrometres after the blockage. Block several and you can knock out entire brain regions as the damage travels even in areas still fed by intact vessels. It was previously assumed that strokes on this scale would be innocuous.

by Laura Blue for Time:

Most doctors say meditation can’t hurt you, but now there’s reassuring evidence that it may help you as well when it comes to warding off disease.

Previous studies have linked better health outcomes among heart patients who practiced meditation compared to those who did not, but none of those trials could definitively credit the brain-focusing program with the better health results. In the latest trial to address those limitations, however, meditation does appear to have an effect on reducing heart attack, stroke and even early death from heart disease, at least among African-Americans.

“The main finding [of our research] is that, added on top of usual medical care, intervention with a mind-body technique — transcendental meditation — can have a major effect on cardiovascular events,” says Robert Schneider, lead author on the study published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes and a professor at the Maharishi University of Management, an institution in Iowa that was founded by the creator of transcendental meditation.

by Harold Mandel for The Examiner:

Strokes can be a serious illness which can often be prevented. The National Stroke Association writes that up to 80% of strokes are preventable.

A stroke, or brain attack, is said to occur when a blood clot blocks an artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain. Brain cells begin to die when either of these things happen. Abilities of speech, movement and memory which are controlled by that area of the brain are lost when brain cells die.

Cole Petrochko has reported for MedPage Today in an article on October 10, 2012: “Study: More Strokes in Middle-Age.” It has been suggested by data from a regional stroke registry that stroke may be shifting from a disease of the elderly to a midlife health concern.