People with high blood pressure levels face a faster erosion of their ability to think, make decisions and remember information than those with normal blood pressure levels, a new study finds.
The researchers traced high blood pressure’s association with declining brain function over years, in data from six large studies that they pooled and analyzed. They show that blood pressure-related cognitive decline happens at the same pace in people of Hispanic heritage as in non-Hispanic white people.
The team had set out to see if differences in long-term blood pressure control explained why Hispanic people face a 50% higher overall risk of dementia by the end of their life than non-Hispanic white people in the United States.
But the new findings suggest that other factors may play a bigger role in that disparity.
Nevertheless, the new study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease serves as an important reminder of the key role that controlling blood pressure plays in long-term brain health, says Deborah Levine, M.D., M.P.H., lead author of the study and director of the University of Michigan’s Cognitive Health Services Research Program.
SEE ALSO: More older adults should be checking blood pressure at home (uofmhealth.org)
“Our findings suggest that high blood pressure causes faster cognitive decline, and that taking hypertension medication slows the pace of that decline,” says Levine, a professor of internal medicine at the U-M’s academic medical center, Michigan Medicine.
“Since other studies have shown that people of Hispanic heritage in the United States tend to have higher rates of uncontrolled hypertension than non-Hispanic white people, due in part to worse access to care, it’s vital that they get extra support to control their blood pressure even if blood pressure is only part of the picture when it comes to their higher dementia risk,” she adds. “A risk factor like uncontrolled high blood pressure that is more prevalent in one group can still contribute to substantial health disparities.”
Levine and her colleagues looked at changes in the thinking and memory abilities of adults over 18 who took part in six long-term studies conducted over the past five decades. On average, they had access to nearly eight years of data from each person, including systolic blood pressure, which is the top number in any blood pressure reading.
SEE ALSO: More older adults should be checking blood pressure at home
The size of the data set allowed them to trace blood pressure readings and changes on tests of cognitive performance, executive function and memory in Hispanic and non-Hispanic white adults more clearly than any one smaller data set could.