Scientists know that having high blood pressure, particularly between the ages of 40 and 65, increases the risk of developing dementia later in life. Until now, it was not clear whether monitoring your blood pressure at home and then getting on meds to control it if it is high was helpful in reducing dementia in older adults.
“What is so exciting about our study is that the data shows that those people who were taking the blood pressure lowering medication had a lower risk of a dementia diagnosis than those taking a matching placebo,” said Ruth Peters, an associate professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who is also a senior research scientist at Neuroscience Research Australia, a nonprofit research organization, told KSBW News.
The new study, which was published recently in the European Heart Journal, looked at 28,000 older adults (with an average age of 69) who all had a history of hypertension. It found that a drop of about 10 mm/HG on the systolic and 4 mm/HG on the diastolic blood pressure reading at 12 months significantly lowered the risk of a dementia diagnosis.
In addition, as blood pressure dropped, so did cognitive risk, which held true to at least 100 mm/HG systolic and 70 mm/HG diastolic. When sex, age or history of stroke were taken into account, there was no difference in outcome.
