This article requires a subscription to view the full text. If you have a subscription you may use the login form below to view the article. Access to this article can also be purchased.
Abstract
Objective To determine the trajectory of cognitive decline before and after incident stroke.
Methods By using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we studied 9,278 participants without dementia with no history of stroke who underwent cognitive assessment at baseline (wave 1) and at least 1 other time point (waves 2–7). We used linear mixed models to analyze repeated measures and longitudinal data.
Results Among the 9,278 participants (56.8% women, mean age 63.1 ± 10.3 years), 471 (5.1%) incident stroke events were identified. Compared with stroke-free participants, multivariable-adjusted rates of prestroke cognitive decline in global cognition, memory, semantic fluency, and temporal orientation of participants who later experienced an incident stroke were increased by −0.029 , −0.016, −0.022, and −0.024 SD/y, respectively. Among the 471 stroke survivors, the multivariable-adjusted acute changes in the 4 cognitive domains were −0.257, −0.150, −0.121, and −0.272 SD, respectively. In the years after stroke, global cognition declined over time and was steeper than its prestroke slope, that is, by −0.064 SD/y after multivariable adjustment. The rates of memory, semantic fluency, and temporal orientation decline were −0.046, −0.033, and −0.037 SD/y, respectively.
Conclusions Accelerated prestroke cognitive decline and poststroke cognitive decline were associated with incident stroke over a follow-up period of 12 years. Attention should be paid to the long-term cognitive problems of stroke survivors, and intervention and management of major vascular risk factors should start from early life or midlife to reduce the risk of cerebrovascular disease and the associated cognitive impairment.
Glossary
- ELSA=
- English Longitudinal Study of Ageing;
- GCE=
- General Certificate of Education;
- NVQ=
- national vocational qualification
Footnotes
Go to Neurology.org/N for full disclosures. Funding information and disclosures deemed relevant by the authors, if any, are provided at the end of the article.
- Received June 12, 2018.
- Accepted in final form February 13, 2019.
- © 2019 American Academy of Neurology
AAN Members
We have changed the login procedure to improve access between AAN.com and the Neurology journals. If you are experiencing issues, please log out of AAN.com and clear history and cookies. (For instructions by browser, please click the instruction pages below). After clearing, choose preferred Journal and select login for AAN Members. You will be redirected to a login page where you can log in with your AAN ID number and password. When you are returned to the Journal, your name should appear at the top right of the page.
AAN Non-Member Subscribers
Purchase access
Letters: Rapid online correspondence
REQUIREMENTS
You must ensure that your Disclosures have been updated within the previous six months. Please go to our Submission Site to add or update your Disclosure information.
Your co-authors must send a completed Publishing Agreement Form to Neurology Staff (not necessary for the lead/corresponding author as the form below will suffice) before you upload your comment.
If you are responding to a comment that was written about an article you originally authored:
You (and co-authors) do not need to fill out forms or check disclosures as author forms are still valid
and apply to letter.
Submission specifications:
- Submissions must be < 200 words with < 5 references. Reference 1 must be the article on which you are commenting.
- Submissions should not have more than 5 authors. (Exception: original author replies can include all original authors of the article)
- Submit only on articles published within 6 months of issue date.
- Do not be redundant. Read any comments already posted on the article prior to submission.
- Submitted comments are subject to editing and editor review prior to posting.
