Joint word recall and functional limitation among selected SHARE participants with prior survey-identified stroke versus a stroke-free reference group.

BACKGROUND: Joint word-recall and everyday-function patterns after stroke require comparison with older adults without prior stroke. We compared survey-observed distributions while retaining longer-term observation limitations. METHODS: We analyzed SHARE Waves 1, 2 and 4-8. T1 was the first post-stroke-positive assessment with valid recall and function, selecting survivors who remained observed and measurable. One country-wave-aligned pseudo-index with valid measures was selected per eligible, explicitly stroke-negative reference participant with no recorded stroke-positive response at or before that assessment. Overlap weighting balanced country-wave, age, sex and education. Four states combined low relative word recall and ADL/IADL limitation; four-year outcomes were secondary. RESULTS: Among 2470 stroke and 83,767 reference participants, overlap-weighted proportions were 57.1% versus 74.4% for neither state (difference -17.3 percentage points, 95% CI -19.3 to -15.3), 7.2% versus 6.8% for low relative recall only (0.3, -0.7 to 1.4), 26.4% versus 15.0% for functional limitation only (11.4, 9.6 to 13.1), and 9.4% versus 3.8% for both (5.6, 4.4 to 6.8). The maximum post-weighting absolute standardized mean difference was 0.00053, and sensitivity estimates were similar. In the secondary 778-person subset with full potential four-year coverage, 28.1% were unavailable. CONCLUSIONS: The aligned comparison showed a redistribution toward states containing functional limitation, with similar recall-only proportions. These standardized distributions describe selected observed participants and are neither population prevalence nor causal stroke effects.