Cardiac Health Linked to Brain Health

In that cardiac dysfunction is associated with neuroanatomic and neuropsychological changes in aging adults with prevalent cardiovascular disease, Boston University School of Medicine (Massachusetts, USA) researchers explored the role of cardiac function, as measured by cardiac index, in the neuropsychological markers of cognitive decline.  Angela L. Jefferson and colleagues studied brain MRI, cardiac MRI, neuropsychological, and laboratory data collected on 1,504 men and women, average age 62 years, enrolled in the Framingham Offspring Cohort, who did not have cardiovascular issues at the study’s start.   Decreased cardiac index, the amount of blood that pumps from the heart in relation to a person's body size, was associated with decreased brain volume using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The participants who had the lowest cardiac index showed almost two years more brain aging than the people with the highest cardiac index. The participants in the middle cardiac index group, who had low but still normal levels of blood pumping from the heart, also showed almost two years more brain aging than the people with the highest (or healthiest) cardiac index. The team concludes that: “Although observational data cannot establish causality, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that decreasing cardiac function, even at normal cardiac index levels, is associated with accelerated brain aging.”