A Swedish cohort report found that adults aged 60–69 with lower scores on a set of cognitive tests were more likely to have a later stroke than peers with higher scores. The finding is an association between groups—not proof that memory changes cause stroke or a way to predict an individual’s risk.
What the reported study found
Earth.com’s 2026 account of a study in the Journal of the American Heart Association describes 4,912 adults from the Good Aging in Skåne cohort in southern Sweden. Participants were at least 60 and had no dementia, previous stroke, or transient ischemic attack when selected. Examinations began in 2001, 2007, or 2012; the report says researchers followed participants for a mean of 12.3 years and recorded 572 first strokes using Sweden’s National Patient Register. The primary journal paper was not independently verified here, so the study details and estimates below are attributed to Earth.com’s report.
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Among participants aged 60–69, the lowest third on the combined cognitive score had an adjusted 86% higher stroke risk than the highest third. These are relative group comparisons, not percentage-point increases in absolute risk. Earth.com also reports adjusted relative increases of 68% for the lowest memory third and 66% for the slowest processing-speed group in this age band. It reports no clear association for verbal-fluency or number tasks.
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What the tests measured—and what they did not
This was not a study of one forgotten name or an isolated memory slip. Participants completed tasks involving word recall and recognition, visual processing speed, naming animals or jobs, and repeating numbers backward. Researchers combined results into an overall score and divided participants within age groups into thirds.
According to Earth.com, the combined-score association was not found after adjustment among participants in their 70s or those aged 80 and older. The report says the overall-score association appeared mainly in men in a sex-stratified analysis, but presents that as a lead rather than a settled conclusion. The lack of a detected association in older groups does not establish that no relationship exists there.
The report also notes later dementia diagnoses in 6.2% of participants in their 60s in the lowest overall-score third, compared with 1.6% in the highest third. That difference could complicate interpretation: some participants with low scores may already have been in early stages of dementia. It does not show that dementia caused the stroke association.
Why this does not predict your personal stroke risk
The study followed a population and compared outcomes; it did not test whether improving memory lowers stroke risk. Even after statistical adjustment for factors Earth.com lists—including age, sex, education, exercise, weight, smoking, alcohol, diabetes, blood pressure, cholesterol, heart disease, irregular heartbeat, and relevant medicines—other differences between participants may remain.
- Association is not causation. The results cannot show that memory changes lead to stroke, or that treating a cognitive score would prevent one.
- A relative comparison is not a personal probability. The reported 86% figure compares the lowest and highest thirds in one age group; it does not give an individual’s absolute chance of stroke.
- The finding has limits. The report notes possible selection bias if people who joined were healthier than those who did not, and says results from southern Sweden may not transfer directly to populations with different health systems and habits.
- Stroke classification may have been imperfect. Some minor strokes may have been classified as transient ischemic attacks and excluded; CT was the usual stroke scan in Sweden during much of the study period, according to the report.
The researchers discussed silent brain injury as one possible explanation because it could affect cognition and later stroke risk. The analysis did not use brain scans to test that possibility, so it remains a hypothesis rather than an established mechanism.
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What to do if your memory is slipping
A set of study tests is not a consumer screening tool, and this report does not establish that an at-home memory test can tell you whether you will have a stroke. Earth.com reports that study lead Alice Askemyr, a physician and doctoral student in geriatrics at Lund University, suggested that someone noticing memory slipping speak with a healthcare professional. A clinician can consider the person’s symptoms and health context; this study does not supply a diagnostic threshold or a stroke-risk calculation.
For wider context, the American Heart Association’s 2026 scientific statement describes brain health as optimal functioning across cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains throughout life, with vascular and other influences. That broad framing does not independently confirm the age-specific association in the Swedish cohort.
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Age is important to interpreting the report, not just a detail to discard. Askemyr told Earth.com that people aged 60–69 may be more comparable to one another than people aged 80 and older, and that associations can be easier to detect in a younger age band. She also cautioned that the reported pattern’s absence in older groups does not prove that no pattern exists. The result should therefore be understood as a finding in one age-stratified cohort, not a rule about all older adults.
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