People who have high blood pressure, diabetes or coronary heart disease perform worse on mental tests of reasoning, memory and reaction time and having more than one of these ailments may have an even greater effect, researchers said today.
The study undertaken in the University of Glasgow and led by researchers from the university's Institute of Health and Wellbeing, suggests that preventing or delaying cardiovascular disease or diabetes may delay cognitive decline and possible dementia.
While previous research has made the link between cardiometabolic diseases and worse cognitive abilities, the additive effect on cognitive skills of having more than one of these diseases has not been known until now, the research and published in the European Heart Journal said.
"Having one disease was associated with poorer performance on all the cognitive tests; but having two diseases was worse and three worse still, particularly for reaction times and reasoning," said Donald Lyall from the Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow.
"Importantly our analysis took account of lots of things which might have resulted in an erroneous result; such as medication usage, gender, age, deprivation, education levels, depression, smoking history, alcohol intake and obesity," Lyall said.
This is significant because there are a rising number of people surviving with coronary heart disease (CHD) and, as obesity levels continue to rise, more people are also developing and living longer with diabetes.
A decline in thinking skills ('cognitive abilities') can be an important precursor to subsequent mild cognitive impairment or even dementia into older age.
"Our findings highlight the potential to protect against cognitive decline by addressing other conditions such as heart disease. The reduction in mental test scores was relatively small for individuals, but may expand as people age," Lyall said.
"Given rising levels of multi-morbidity, ie, where people are living with more than one chronic disease, and public health concerns regarding cognitive decline, our work has important implications for future research in this important area," Lyall said.
The researchers studied nearly half a million participants from the UK Biobank, from data taken between 2006 and 2010.
Participants' data was divided by medical history and the number of cardiometabolic diseases they had and scores on tests of reasoning, reaction time and memory were then compared.
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