By Beth Gilbert HealthDay Reporter
The annual International Stroke Conference of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association was held from Feb. 5 to 7 in Los Angeles and drew participants from around the world, including cerebrovascular research and practice experts. The conference featured presentations that emphasized basic, clinical, and translational medicine and provided insight into the prevention, management, and treatment of stroke.
In one study, Bernard Ofosuhene, of UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, and colleagues identified a strong association between electrocardiogram (ECG)-age and cognitive performance, which could lead to ECG-age serving as a potential biomarker for detecting cognitive decline.
The authors evaluated 63,800 participants between August 2023 and July 2024 as part of the U.K. Biobank, a large and ongoing study of more than 500,000 volunteers in the United Kingdom who enrolled between 2006 and 2010. Participants went through a number of cognitive tests to determine ECG-age. Based on the results, participants were divided into three categories: normal aging; accelerated ECG-aging (older than their chronological age); and decelerated ECG-aging (younger than their chronological age). Compared with the normal-aging group, the researchers found that participants within the decelerated ECG-aging category performed better on six of eight cognitive tests, while those within the accelerated ECG-aging category performed worse on six of eight cognitive tests.
“In conclusion, this research leverages our understanding on how ECG data could be utilized by artificial intelligence as a potential diagnostic tool for cognitive impairment,” Ofosuhene said. “Using ECG data to access cognitive functioning could lead to rapid diagnosis and timely intervention compared to the traditional cognitive tests.”
In another study, Tamara N. Kimball, M.D., of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues found that adopting healthier lifestyles and improving modifiable risk factors might mitigate some of the negative effects of shorter telomeres, which reflect adverse lifestyle choices and social and environmental determinants of health earlier in life.
The authors examined data from more than 356,000 participants as part of the U.K. Biobank and found that individuals with shorter leukocyte telomere length (LTL) had an increased risk for age-related brain diseases, including stroke, dementia, and late-life depression. In addition, improved modifiable risk factor profiles appeared to mitigate the impact of LTL on these diseases.
“This study suggests that telomere length reflects broader biological stressors such as senescence and inflammation, acting more as a surrogate marker of these processes rather than a direct cause of age-related brain diseases,” Kimball said. “Future research should explore the mechanisms linking LTL to disease processes and evaluate how lifestyle and therapeutic interventions influence the cellular aging processes for which LTL serves as a marker.”
Gabriela Trifan, M.D., of the University of Illinois in Chicago, and colleagues found that a Mediterranean diet independently improves brain health, and even small changes in diet can lead to long-term brain health benefits.
As part of the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging-MRI Ancillary study, the authors evaluated approximately 2,800 participants who completed 24-hour dietary recalls of predefined food and nutritional categories at baseline (2008 to 2011) and again approximately 30 days later. Diffusion tensor imaging and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery were utilized to investigate microscopic and visible changes in the brain, and the American Heart Association’s Life Simple 7 score components were used to assess cardiovascular health. The researchers found that following a Mediterranean diet led to a healthier brain, as defined by lesser volumes of white matter hyperintensity (WMH) on magnetic resonance imaging and by improved white matter microstructural integrity (i.e., higher general fractional anisotropy and lower peak width of skeletonized mean diffusivity) as seen on diffusion tensor imaging.
“These results were not entirely explained by higher cardiovascular health scores (measured using the Life’s Simple 7 score), suggesting that there are noncardiovascular mechanisms directly impacting the brain structure and function. These mechanisms likely play a key role in protecting against neurodegeneration and cognitive decline,” Trifan said. “Our results are of clinical significance as it shows that even a small decrease in WMH volume could be clinically relevant, particularly for cognitive health.”
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