New Delhi: Even a minor cardiac dysfunction could help predict tissue degradation at the microscopic level in brain regions closely linked to Alzheimer’s disease, a study has found.
The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, explored the relationship between heart issues and cognitive function and found that the tissue damage accounted for the link between minor heart dysfunction and poor long-term memory performance.
“Tracking brain microstructural integrity offers a novel avenue for neurological risk stratification in patients with cardiac dysfunction,” Xia Zhang, from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, said.
Seventy three patients from the Leipzig Heart Study were tracked over the course of 3.5 years — baseline cardiac assessments were followed by magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive testing after the study period.
Among all the participants, a lower ejection fraction — percentage of blood pumped out by the heart’s left ventricle with each heartbeat — predicted a greater gray matter mean diffusivity in the future.
The result held true for patients without clinical heart failure, suggesting that the heart dysfunction could act as an early-stage indicator, the study said.
“Across all 73 participants, a lower baseline ejection fraction predicted greater future gray matter mean diffusivity even in patients without clinical heart failure, acting as an early-stage indicator,” the authors wrote.
Further, an increased mean diffusivity in brain regions considered vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease — specifically the cingulate and lingual gyri, which bridge visual processing with emotional and cognitive functions — significantly mediated the association between cardiac health and subsequent memory performance, they said.
“Cardiac dysfunction is associated with a predictable continuum of brain microstructural damage where conventional imaging previously failed,” the authors said.
“Crucially, this microstructural degradation mediates the link to memory decline, identifying brain microstructural integrity as a high-priority targets for upstream intervention aimed at preserving cognitive health,” they wrote.
