Cognitive problems and stroke risk

People with memory problems or other cognitive difficulties could be at a higher risk of having a stroke. Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham studied thousands of people who were aged 45 and over at the start of the study. At the outset of the study 14,842 people took a verbal fluency test and 17,851 took a word-recall memory test. The participants were then followed-up by phone for up to five years to see whether they had had a stroke. Those who scored in the bottom 20% for verbal fluency were 3.6 times more likely to develop a stroke than those who scored in the top 20% while those who were in the top 20% on the memory test were 3.5 times more likely to have a stroke than those in the bottom 20%.