Prevent Second Stroke to Ward Off Alzheimer’s Disease

Sarah Pendlebury, from John Radcliffe Hospital (Oxford, United Kingdom), and colleagues analyzed 30 previously completed studies involving 7,511 people and published between 1950 and mid-year 2009.  Reporting that “10% of patients had dementia before first stroke, 10% developed new dementia soon after first stroke, and more than a third had dementia after recurrent stroke,” the researchers comment that “first, there is a clear relationship between having multiple strokes and the risk of dementia; and secondly, the data suggest that the presence of complications after stroke [which may include high blood pressure, low oxygen saturation, cardiac events, and seizures] also increase the risk of developing dementia.”