Association between cognitive impairment and cardiovascular burden in patients with severe mental disorder

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Cognitive impairment is related to an increase in cardiovascular risk (CVR) in the general population. However, in severe mental disorder (SMD), the evidence is less consistent. Few studies have evaluated the relationship between cognition and vascular burden in SMD. This study determines the relationship between cognition and vascular burden in patients with SMD.

Methods: Sixty SMD patients (61% men, mean age: 46) attending a psychosocial rehabilitation centre were included. We evaluated sociodemographic, clinical, laboratory, quality of life and functionality characteristics. And we analysed the association between cognitive performance and vascular burden.

Results: SMD diagnoses were: 41.7% schizophrenia, 20.0% bipolar, 5.0% schizoaffective, 21.7% depressive and 11.7% other. Cognitive impairment was present in 55% of the cases. The average vascular burden was 3.2. Patients with cognitive impairment have a significantly higher vascular burden than patients without cognitive impairment (p < 0.05). The speed of processing had a moderate correlation with vascular burden (r = −0.457, p = 0.001).

Conclusions: Patients with cognitive impairment had a significantly higher vascular burden than patients without cognitive impairment. There are two practical clinical implications: CVR should be evaluated in all SMD patients; and psychoeducation programmes for CVR should be performed and adapted to the cognitive deficits.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognition
• vascular burden
• cardiovascular risk
• cognitive impairment
• severe mental disorder

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Quintí Foguet-Boreu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6069-5305

Pere Roura Poch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7288-3012

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was cofounded by Osonament (Osona Psychopedagogical Medical Center) and the Industrial Doctorate Program funded by the Government of Catalonia [grant number 2015 DI 024].