People with poor thinking skills may be at higher risk of heart attack or stroke, a study has shown.

Scientists made the discovery after monitoring the progress of almost 4,000 individuals with an average age of 75 for three years.

At the start of the study, participants had their high-level thinking skills evaluated by tests and were graded accordingly.

Those in the lowest test score group were 85 per cent more likely to have a heart attack and 51 per cent more likely to have a stroke than members of the highest group.

Lead researcher Behnam Sabayan, from Leiden University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, said: “These results show that heart and brain function are more closely related than appearances would suggest.

Heart and brain function are more closely related than appearances would suggest

“While these results might not have immediate clinical translation, they emphasise that assessment of cognitive function should be part of the evaluation of future cardiovascular risk.”

During the course of the study, the researchers recorded 375 heart attacks and 155 strokes.

The findings are published online in the journal Neurology.

Sabayan added: “Performance on tests of thinking and memory are a measure of brain health. Lower scores on thinking tests indicate worse brain functioning.

“Worse brain functioning in particular in executive function could reflect disease of the brain vascular supply, which in turn would predict, as it did, a higher likelihood of stroke.

“And, since blood vessel disease in the brain is closely related to blood vessel disease in the heart, that’s why low test scores also predicted a greater risk of heart attacks. We acknowledge that even though the results were statistically significant, the risks were small.”