Feb. 4, 2024
The risk of developing dementia is significantly higher within a year of surviving a stroke, a new study using data from Ontario suggests.
Researchers examined a database at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. They identified over 180,000 people who suffered a stroke and matched the survivors to two control groups: people in the general population and those who had a heart attack but not a stroke.
The study, which examined data from 2002 to 2022, found that the risk of dementia was 80 per cent higher in stroke survivors than both the general population and those who had a heart attack.
“Our findings show that stroke survivors are uniquely susceptible to dementia, and the risk can be up to 3 times higher in the first year after a stroke,” said lead study author Raed Joundi, M.D., D.Phil., an assistant professor at McMaster University.