High Blood Pressure May Worsen Alzheimer’s
November 30th, 2007 Posted by: Dr. Cox
(Ivanhoe Newswire) â Not only does high blood pressure raise your risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or aneurysm, it can also worsen the effects of Alzheimerâs disease.
A new study from the University of Pittsburgh finds hypertension reduces blood flow in the brains of Alzheimerâs patients.
âThis study demonstrates that good vascular Men’s health is also good for the brain,â study co-author Oscar Lopez, M.D., University of Pittsburgh, was quoted as saying. âEven in people with Alzheimerâs disease, it is important to detect and aggressively treat hypertension and also to focus on disease prevention.â
Researchers used arterial spin-labeled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure the blood flow in the brains of 68 older adults. 48 of the participants did not have Alzheimerâs disease â of them 38 had hypertension; 20 were Alzheimerâs patients â 10 with hypertension, 10 without; and 20 had mild cognitive impairment â 10 with hypertension, 10 without. Mild cognitive impairment affects language, attention, and reasoning, and is a transition stage between normal aging deficits in the brain and more pronounced dementia.
Results show blood flow in the brain was substantially decreased in all the groups in patients with hypertension compared to those without it. Cerebral blood flow was lowest among the Alzheimerâs patients who had hypertension but the normal groups with hypertension had much lower cerebral blood flow than the normal group without hypertension.
The authors say the findings suggest hypertension â whether it is treated or untreated â may contribute to the pathology of Alzheimerâs by changing the blood flow to the brain.
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SOURCE: Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago, Illinois, Nov. 25-30, 2007