According to the Institut de Veille Sanitaire (InVS), each year in France, around 1,000 children are born with a heart defect. Congenital heart disease (i.e. heart disease that appears during fetal development) affects 0.8% of births.
Children born with congenital heart disease are more likely than others to develop senile dementia from the age of 65, according to a new study conducted by the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (in the United States).
To reach this conclusion, American researchers (who worked in cooperation with Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark) followed the health status of 10,632 adults born in Denmark between 1890 and 1982.
A risk of senile dementia increased by about 60%
Results ? Scientists found that people with congenital heart disease had, on average, a 60% increased risk of developing senile dementia around the age of 65. And before the age of 65, the risk was even multiplied by 2.6 compared to the rest of the population.
“We believe that this increased risk is linked to the management of congenital heart disease which was, at the time, much less sophisticated than today,” explains Dr. Nicolas Madsen, pediatrician specializing in cardiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. However, this work could allow better medical monitoring of adults born with a heart defect. “
This work has been published in Circulation, the trade journal of the American Heart Association.
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