A fresh round of health fears has once again surfaced around Donald Trump, with a top US doctor and former professor believing the president is showing symptoms of having “had a stroke”. Rumours of Trump’s declining health have been rampant in recent months, from a strange bruise appearing on his hand every few months, falling asleep in meetings and slips of his memory.

While many of these may be common for someone of his age battling an illness or undergoing treatment, the White House’s consistent claims that the President is ‘fitter than ever’ have only poured petrol onto the fire that is the rumour mill. Being the leader of the free world is a job that ages politicians; a simple look at the before and after of Obama, Clinton or Bush Jr before and after they finished their terms will show the toll it takes on a person. When Trump was inaugurated for his second term, he became the oldest president to ever be elected, a title that seems to have increased the ageing process.

The most recent claims come from Dr John Gartner, American psychologist, psychiatrist and former assistant professor at John Hopkins Medical School.

The esteemed doctor has noticed an increasing pattern in Trump’s speech and memory and claims it shows all the hallmarks of an Alzheimer’s or dementia sufferer – even going as far as suggesting Trump is showing symptoms of stroke.

Speaking to the I, Dr Gartner added: “The main way to diagnose dementia is that we see a deterioration from someone’s own baseline in these four areas: language, memory, behaviour, and psychomotor performance.

“First of all, if you look at tapes of him in the 1980s, he was actually quite articulate. He was still a jerk… but he was speaking in polished paragraphs.

“Now he has trouble completing a sentence, a thought and sometimes even a word… That’s a huge deterioration from his baseline, and he also used to be quite physically coordinated, and now he can barely walk a straight line.

“He’s also showing signs of tangential speech. He goes from one topic to another in a way that’s really just kind of a loose association.”

However, it’s not just in Trump’s speech that caught the psychiatrist’s eye; Dr Gartner also pointed to the president’s coordination.

“On the red carpet at Davos, you may have noticed him weaving. That relates to one of the signs of what I think he has: frontotemporal dementia,” Gartner added. “That walk is called a wide base gait where he swings his right leg in kind of a semicircle and that drives him to the left,” he said.

“That seems to have gotten dramatically worse recently. It may be related to the stroke I think he’s had on the left side of his body.”

The White House has repeatedly denied claims of Trump’s poor health. Speaking about Alzheimer’s specifically, a condition Trump’s father suffered with, the president said: “At a certain age, about 86, 87, he started getting, what do they call it?”

Trump then pointed to his forehead and looked at his Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who replied, “Alzheimer’s.”

He then added: “Like an Alzheimer’s thing. Well, I don’t have it.”

Trump also says he has “aced” numerous cognitive tests.