High Blood Pressure Could Exacerbate Alzheimer's

High Blood Pressure Could Exacerbate Alzheimer's
FRIDAY, Nov. 30 (HealthDay News) -- High blood pressure reducesblood flow to the brains of Alzheimer's patients and exacerbates thesymptoms of the disease, a new study finds.
A team at the University of Pittsburgh used MRI to measure brain bloodflow in older adults, including 20 Alzheimer's patients (10 withhypertension and 10 without); 48 normal adults (38 with hypertension and10 without); and 20 people with mild cognitive impairment (10 withhypertension and 10 without).
Mild cognitive impairment affects brain functions such as language,attention and reasoning, and is a transition stage between normalage-related brain deficits and increased levels of dementia.
All the participants with hypertension showed substantially reducedblood flow in the brain. Alzheimer's patients with hypertension had thelowest levels of blood flow, but the normal adults with hypertension hadsignificantly less blood flow than normal adults without high bloodpressure.
"While hypertension is not a cause of Alzheimer's disease, our studyshows that it is another hit on the brain that increases its vulnerabilityto the effects of the disease," study co-author Dr. Cyrus Raji, a Ph.D.candidate, said in a prepared statement.
"This study demonstrates that good vascular health is also good for thebrain," added co-author Dr. Oscar Lopez, a professor of neurology andpsychiatry. "Even in people with Alzheimer's disease, it is important todetect and aggressively treat hypertension and also to focus on diseaseprevention."
The findings were scheduled to be presented Wednesday in Chicago at theannual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America.
The results of this study follow a report earlier this month inNeurology in which researchers at Johns Hopkins University Schoolof Medicine found that Alzheimer's may progress more rapidly in patientswith high blood pressure and a heartbeat problem called atrialfibrillation.
More information
The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.