On the Pulse: How Resting Heart Rate Improves a Dementia Risk Score’s Accuracy
From Dementia Matters by Wisconsin Alzheimer‘s Disease Research Center
February 10, 2026 · 30 min · Episode 228
About this episode
This episode discusses how integrating resting heart rate can improve the accuracy of dementia risk assessments across different racial groups.
What if your heartbeat could help determine your dementia risk? The CAIDE dementia risk score has long helped clinicians estimate midlife risk for dementia using cardiovascular health factors, but its accuracy hasn’t been equal across populations. New research suggests that integrating resting heart rate meaningfully improves predictive performance across most racial groups. In this interview, Dr. Newman Sze and Shakiru Alaka join us to dig into how and why resting heart rate enhances CAIDE’s accuracy, what the data shows across different racial groups, and what this could mean for earlier, more equitable identification of dementia risk in both research and clinical settings. Guests: Newman Sze, PhD, professor of health sciences, Brock University, Canada Research Chair in Mechanisms of Health and Disease, and Shakiru Alaka, MS, senior analyst, Canadian Institute for Health Information, data scientist, Western University Show Notes Read Shakiru and Dr. Sze’s study, “Enhancing the validity of CAIDE dementia risk scores with resting heart rate and machine learning: An analysis from the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center across all races/ethnicities,” published in Alzheimer’s…
People in this episode
Guests: Shakiru Alaka Ms, Newman Sze Phd
Topics covered
- dementia risk
- resting heart rate
- CAIDE dementia risk score
- cardiovascular health
- racial disparities in health
Keywords
- predictive performance
- equitable identification
- clinical settings
Mentioned in this episode
Products: CAIDE dementia risk score
Books & works: Enhancing the validity of CAIDE dementia risk scores, When Memory Fades: What to Expect at Every Stage, from Early Signs to Full Support for Alzheimer's and Dementia
Places: Canada
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