TORONTO – How quickly men complete a simple test of connecting the dots may help determine their risk of dying of a stroke, Swedish scientists report.
Called the Trail Making Test, it’s a straightforward quiz that asks users to draw lines with a pencil between numbers in ascending order as quickly as possible.
But after testing on 1,000 men, Uppsala University researchers say respondents who finished the task slower than their counterparts were three times as likely to die after a stroke.
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Of the 1,000 men, between 67 and 75 years old, 155 men had a stroke, 22 died within a month and more than half died after about two and a half years during the 14-year follow up.
Those who had scored the worst on their TMT were more likely to die – those in the bottom 30 per cent were three times more likely to die after a stroke compared to those in the top 30 per cent.
The researchers pored over data tracking the heart disease and stroke risk factors more than 2,300 men faced since the age of 50. These health records were gathered through the university’s longitudinal study of adult men but the researchers also added another 900 original participants, documenting their health from 1991 to 2006, starting at the age of 70.
None of the men in either group had been diagnosed with stroke at the onset of the study.
The researchers suggest the test may be able to pick up brain impairments.
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Canada, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Each year, about 14,000 Canadians die from stroke, the organization says.
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