Why Might a Mini-Stroke Raise Dementia Risk?<\/p>\n
Is there something about having a TIA that increases the risk of dementia, or could it be that the same risk factors that make a mini-stroke more likely also increase the likelihood of dementia?<\/p>\n
The answer is probably some combination of both, says Joundi. \u201cTIA and dementia certainly share many risk factors, including high blood pressure, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, and other vascular diseases,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut importantly, we matched people with TIA to people of the same age and sex who had similar vascular risk factors and comorbidities, and there was still a substantial excess risk of dementia. That suggests that common measured risk factors alone do not completely explain the association,\u201d says Joundi.<\/p>\n
Later strokes didn\u2019t explain the link either. \u201cOne thing we could show is that the association was not explained by people having strokes after the TIA,\u201d Joundi says. While it did increase dementia risk, as expected, accounting for those strokes only minimally changed the association between TIA and dementia, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cTIA may be both a marker of a brain prone to cognitive decline and potentially a contributor to subsequent brain injury, such as accelerating neurodegeneration,\u201d Joundi says. More studies that look at what is actually happening in the brain are needed to disentangle those possibilities, he adds.<\/p>\n