‘Silent Strokes’ Linked to Memory Loss in Elderly: Study

THURSDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) — In some cases, memory loss
among the elderly may be due to so-called “silent strokes,” new research
suggests.

Such strokes, which may not cause any noticeable symptoms, result in
small pockets of dead brain cells, and are found in roughly 25 percent of
older adults, the study team noted.

“The new aspect of this study of memory loss in the elderly is that it
examines silent strokes and [brain] shrinkage simultaneously,” study
author Adam Brickman, of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s
Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center in New
York, explained in a news release from the American Academy of
Neurology.

The research, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of
Health, is slated for publication in the Jan. 3 issue of the journal
Neurology.

The study authors arrived at their conclusions after working with 658
men and women aged 65 and older, none of whom had a history of
dementia.

All the participants underwent MRI brain scans, as well as testing to
gauge their capacities in terms of memory, language skills, thinking speed
and visual perception.

The brain scans revealed that 174 of the participants had experienced
silent strokes, and the investigators found that these seniors did not
perform as well on the memory exams. This finding held regardless of
whether the part of the patient’s brain responsible for memory (the
hippocampus) was found to be relatively small or not.

“Given that conditions like Alzheimer’s disease are defined mainly by
memory problems, our results may lead to further insight into what causes
symptoms and the development of new interventions for prevention,”
Brickman noted in the news release. “Since silent strokes and the volume
of the hippocampus appeared to be associated with memory loss separately
in our study, our results also support stroke prevention as a means for
staving off memory problems,” he added.

More information

For more on stroke risk factors and symptoms, visit the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and
Stroke
.

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