Physical activity before stroke, small vessel disease and cognitive decline after stroke

Hypothesis

Higher level of PA before acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is associated with decreased risk of cognitive decline after stroke independently of stroke severity and cSVD burden.

Data

Physical Activity Scale in the Elderly (PASE) questionnaire
Modified Rankin Scale (mRS)
Level of education
Informant Questionnaire on Cognitive Decline in the Elderly, short version (IQCODE)
Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS), Scandinavian version
Wellbeing and depressive symptoms
Cerebral Small vessel disease burden (cSVD score)

Education

Characteristic	Overall, N = 95¹	female, N = 33¹	male, N = 62¹
Level of education
Folkeskole (9-10 år)	20 (21%)	11 (33%)	9 (15%)
Gymnasiale/erhvervsfaglige uddannelser (11-12 år)	30 (32%)	8 (24%)	22 (36%)
Erhvervsakademiuddannelser (13-14 år)	16 (17%)	5 (15%)	11 (18%)
Professionsbachelor/universitetsbachelor (15-17 år)	18 (19%)	8 (24%)	10 (16%)
Kandidatuddannelser (18-19 år)	10 (11%)	1 (3.0%)	9 (15%)
PhD ( > 20 år)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)	0 (0%)
Not classified	1	0	1
¹ n (%)

SVD scoring

Number of microbleeds (SWI)
Superficiel siderose (SWI)
Lacunes (3D FLAIR)
White matter hyperintensities (3D FLAIR)
Enlarged Perivascular Space (3D FLAIR)
Atrophy (3D T1)

SVD score

Characteristic	N = 20¹
svd_score
0	2 (10%)
1	4 (20%)
2	3 (15%)
3	5 (25%)
4	1 (5.0%)
5	2 (10%)
8	1 (5.0%)
9	1 (5.0%)
10	1 (5.0%)
¹ n (%)

IQCODE og RBANS

Characteristic	Overall, N = 95¹	female, N = 33¹	male, N = 62¹
mRS at inclusion
0	69 (73%)	22 (67%)	47 (76%)
1	17 (18%)	6 (18%)	11 (18%)
2	9 (9.5%)	5 (15%)	4 (6.5%)
IQCODE score	49.0 (48.0, 54.0)	49.5 (48.0, 53.0)	49.0 (48.0, 54.0)
RBANS 3 months	81 (73, 90)	83 (73, 90)	80 (74, 85)
RBANS 12 months	84 (73, 94)	86 (72, 92)	78 (73, 93)
¹ n (%); Median (IQR)

RBANS plot