Cardiovascular Disease and Cognitive Function

A multitude of cardiovascular (CV) diseases and their risk factors confer substantial increase in risk for poor clinical brain health outcomes, including stroke, vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s dementia, and mixed forms of these dementias. Yet, long before clinical manifestations of stroke or dementia, CV risk factors and diseases negatively impact brain and cognitive health. This chapter provides a brief overview of the relations of select CV risk factors (e.g., blood pressure, blood glucose and lipids, body mass index, inflammation), subclinical CV disease processes (e.g., arterial stiffening, atherosclerosis, endothelial function, left ventricular hypertrophy), and clinical CV diseases (e.g., cardiac arrhythmias, coronary heart disease, peripheral arterial disease, heart failure) to cognitive function and decline and underlying neurobiological mechanisms, focusing predominantly on studies of non-demented, stroke-free persons. Substantial evidence suggests a continuum of neurocognitive and neurobiological decrement associated with increasingly severe manifestations of CV risk and disease that can worsen progressively. Accordingly, early and aggressive efforts at prevention and intervention with CV risk and disease are critical to the maintenance of brain health and cognitive function across the life span.