Irregular heartbeat may increase a person’s risk of developing dementia in later life

An irregular heartbeat may increase a person's risk of developing dementia, warns new research.

The study shows that people with a particular kind of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation may experience a faster decline in thinking and memory skills, and have a greater risk of dementia than those without the condition.

The good news from the study is that people with atrial fibrillation who were taking anticoagulants, or blood thinners, to keep their blood from clotting were actually less likely to develop dementia than those who did not take blood thinners.

Study author Dr Chengxuan Qiu, of the Karo l i n s k a Institute and Stockholm University in Sweden, said: 'Compromised blood flow caused by atrial fibrillation may affect the brain in a number of ways.

For the study, researchers looked at figures from 2,685 participants with an average age of 73 who were followed as part of a larger study.

Over the course of the study, an additional 279 people (11 per cent) developed atrial fibrillation and 399 (15 per cent) developed dementia.

Researchers found that those who had atrial fibrillation had a faster rate of decline in thinking and memory skills than those without the condition and were 40 per cent more likely to develop dementia.

Of the 2,163 people who didn't have irregular heartbeat, 278 people developed demen- tia ( 10 per cent). Of the 522 people with irregular heartbeat, 121 developed dementia (23 per cent).

The findings were published online by the journal Neurology.