People over the age of 60, especially those with high blood pressure, may experience a "silent stroke" and won't even know it, Australian researchers say.
"These strokes are not truly silent, because they have been linked to memory and thinking problems and are a possible cause of a type of dementia," study author Dr. Perminder Sachdev, a neuropsychiatry professor at the University of New South Wales in Sidney, said in a news release from the American Academy of Neurology.
The study, published in the July 28 issue of the journal Neurology, followed 477 people aged 60 to 64 for four years. The researchers found that 7.8% of the group had evidence of strokes that do not cause any noticeable symptoms — known as silent lacunar infarctions — in which blood flow is blocked in one of the arteries leading to areas deep within the brain. An additional 1.6% of the study group had experienced silent strokes by the end of the study period.
Those with high blood pressure had a 60% greater chance of having a silent stroke than those with normal blood pressure. Also, study participants with a condition called white matter hyperintensities were almost five times more likely to have a silent stroke than those without this small type of brain damage, the researchers found.
Source: USA Today
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