Deans' stroke musings: Study links COVID-19 to new-onset dementia in adults aged ≥50 years

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, October 9, 2025

Study links COVID-19 to new-onset dementia in adults aged ≥50 years

Go ask your competent? doctor for EXACT PROTOCOLS THAT PREVENT THAT DEMENTIA! Why doesn't your doctor have them? I've probably had COVID-19 twice, neither severe. Since I'll not be getting dementia from my stroke, I'm sure not getting it from COVID-19.

Study links COVID-19 to new-onset dementia in adults aged ≥50 years

COVID-19 survivors aged ≥50 years may face an increased risk of new-onset dementia, particularly vascular dementia, according to findings from a longitudinal analysis of the UK Biobank dataset published in npj Dementia.

The study, which followed participants for a median of 24.1 months, suggests that while individuals with a prior history of COVID-19 had an elevated new-onset dementia risk compared with uninfected controls, the effect was not significantly greater than that observed among those with non-COVID-19 respiratory illnesses.

“The observed associations may reflect a broader impact of respiratory conditions on cognitive health rather than a COVID-19-specific effect,” wrote Dan Shan, Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom, and colleagues. “From a public health perspective, our findings emphasise the need for heightened cognitive surveillance, especially for older adults recovering from COVID-19 and other vulnerable populations with identified risk factors in this study.”

The analysis utilised propensity-score matching to compare COVID-19 survivors with 2 control groups. The first analysis matched 16,017 COVID-19 survivors (mean age, 65.62 years) to contemporary uninfected controls, while the second matched 2,150 COVID-19 survivors to individuals with other respiratory conditions, including non-COVID-19 respiratory tract infections and non-communicable respiratory diseases.

Using Cox proportional hazards models, the study showed that individuals with a prior COVID-19 infection had a 41% increased risk of all-cause dementia (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.41; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.13-1.75; P = .002) and a 77% increased risk of vascular dementia (HR = 1.77; 95% CI, 1.12-2.82; P = .015) compared with matched uninfected controls. No significant association was observed for Alzheimer’s disease (HR = 1.09; 95% CI, 0.74-1.61; P = .659).

However, COVID-19 did not confer a significantly higher risk of all-cause dementia (HR = 0.93; 95% CI, 0.58-1.48; P = .754), vascular dementia (HR = 0.90; 95% CI, 0.32-2.57; P = .845), or Alzheimer’s disease (HR = 1.96; 95% CI, 0.69-5.63; P = .209) in comparison with non-COVID-19 respiratory tract diseases. Kaplan-Meier survival analyses demonstrated similar dementia-free probabilities between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 respiratory disease groups, with log-rank tests confirming non-significant differences for all-cause dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and vascular dementia.

Moreover, the association was age-dependent, with no significant association observed among individuals aged <65 years (HR = 0.55; 95% CI, 0.23-1.30).

“Given the global burden of dementia and the challenges of an ageing population, early identification and intervention for post-COVID cognitive impairment could have substantial clinical and economic implications,” the authors remarked. “Routine cognitive screening in post-COVID-19 clinics, alongside targeted risk reduction strategies (eg, vascular health optimisation and neuroprotective interventions), may aid in mitigating long-term neurological morbidity.”

Source: npj Dementia