<div><p>NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men with impaired brain function may be at higher risk of suffering a stroke, even if these impairments are quite minor, a new study published today in the journal Neurology hints.</p><p>Several studies have suggested a link between seriously impaired cognitive function and stroke, Dr. Bernice Wiberg of Uppsala University in Sweden and her colleagues note in their report.</p><p>To better understand what types of mental decline might predict stroke risk, they gave 930 70-year-old men tests of mental function, and then followed them for 13 years. At the study's outset, none of the men had suffered a stroke or "mini-stroke" known as a transient ischemic attack.</p><p>During follow-up, 166 of the men had a stroke or a mini-stroke, and 105 had brain injury as a result of the stroke.</p><p>The researchers found that the longer a man took to complete a task known as the Trail Making Test B, the greater his risk of brain injury due to stroke. This particular test requires a person to connect 25 consecutive "dots" consisting of numbers alternating with letters (1, A, 2, B, etc.) and is a measure of a person's visual attention skills and ability to switch among different tasks.</p><p>The men who took the longest to complete the test (around 2.5 to 4 minutes) were more than three times as likely to have stroke-related brain injury as those who did it the quickest (in 43 seconds to about 1.5 minutes).</p><p>"Our results support the idea that cognitive decline regardless of whether a person has dementia may predict risk of stroke," Wiberg noted in a statement from the American Academy of Neurology.</p><p>"The Trail Making Test B is a simple and cost-effective test that, with more research, could be used to identify those persons for whom stroke prevention measures should be considered," the researcher added.</p><p>Stroke is the leading cause of disability and death among older people, making early identification of those at high risk of stroke "extremely important," Wiberg said.</p><p>SOURCE: Neurology, February 2, 2010.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=68269473&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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