Older adults who took medications to treat hypertension had slower cognitive decline compared with their peers who did not take such medications, according to a study published yesterday in Alzheimer’s & Dementia.Ajay Sood, M.D., Ph.D., of Rush University Medical Center, and colleagues combined data from three studies that included 3,361 participants (average age 78 years, 78% women) who were taking antihypertensives at baseline and 586 participants who never took these medications. Participants were followed for an average of 8.6 years and up to 30 years. During annual assessments, participants had their blood pressure taken, reported their medications, and completed cognitive tests.
The researchers also analyzed brain autopsies from 1,849 participants (including 1,647 antihypertensive users) who died during their respective study period.
Participants using antihypertensives had higher levels of global cognition at baseline and a slower rate of cognitive decline over follow-up compared with non-users—especially in the domains of episodic and semantic memory. Brain autopsy results showed that taking antihypertensives was associated with a lower tau tangle density (a marker of Alzheimer’s disease) but not with other neurodegenerative or cerebrovascular pathologies.
The researchers conducted further analyses in which they controlled for blood pressure and other comorbidities, but these adjustments did not change the main findings, “indicating that the positive association between [antihypertensive] use and cognition and the negative association with p-tau are not solely driven by underlying blood pressure,” they wrote.
The authors concluded: “If our findings are corroborated by additional studies, this line of research further opens the window to [Alzheimer’s disease] prevention and possible preventative treatment using [antihypertensives].”
For related information, see the Psychiatric News article “Link Between Abnormal Blood Pressure, Dementia Risk Poses Treatment Conundrum.”
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