Light variations in a person’s pulse could give clues to the probability of future cognitive decline, according to a new study, potentially giving us a new precious test for cognitive problems that would be quick and easy to execute.
This is something in which researchers invest a lot of time, because knowing when the cognitive decline could start and how it can progress, means better support and more clarity for people involved. Along the way, it also reveals new perspectives on how these conditions are developing and how they could be stopped for good.
In this study, an international team analyzed data from the pulse rate during a night’s sleep of 503 people with an average age of 82 years. Cognitive tests were also carried out at that time, as well as at least a follow -up visit.
Using a statistical model called distribution entropy which predicts health results, researchers have found an association between the complexity of the impulse rate – how much the rate of pulse varied and adapted throughout the night – and the cognitive decline in the years to come.
“A higher complexity of the pulse is linked to a slower cognitive decline in the elderly,” write researchers in their published article. On the other hand, reduced complexity has proven to be associated with a faster cognitive decline.
“Future studies should test whether complexity is also associated with the future risks of neurodegenerative disorders, such as dementia, and further elucidate causal directions.”
Distribution entropy is a relatively new alternative method to measure the heart rate and the corresponding pulse speed sent by the body. The researchers have already linked this complexity of the heart rate at rest to other health risks, including cardiorepiratory problems.
Thought is that a more adaptable heart is a healthier heart. If the heart crosses a set of more complex changes in response to what is happening in the body, it works in a more agile and agile way, like a rhythm and a changing direction.
Links have already been suggested between the variability of the heart rate and the cognitive function, but this new type of measurement seems to go further, even predicting the health problems of the brain before the notable symptoms appear.
“The complexity of the heart rate is a characteristic of healthy physiology”, explains the biomedical engineer and computer physiologist Peng Li, the Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Our hearts must be balanced between spontaneity and adaptability, incorporating internal needs and external stress factors.”
More conventional measures of heart rate have not shown no relationship with the subsequent cognitive decline of this study, revealed that researchers, suggesting that the distribution entropy approach could be more sensitive to health changes in the body.
Additional research can now examine why this relationship exists and the type of biological ways it works. The team also wishes to analyze if there is a relationship with the start of dementia, as well as a cognitive decline.
“The results underline the usefulness of our approach as a non -invasive measure of the flexible of the heart to respond to the clues of the nervous system,” explains Chenlu Gao, principal and scientific author of sleep to Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“It is suitable for future studies aimed at understanding the interaction between heart health and cognitive aging.”
Research was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
