High blood pressure linked to dementia

High blood pressure linked to dementia

A new study has revealed that hypertension during the age of 48 to 67 years may pose as a greater threat of cognitive decline and dementia as compared with individuals who had normal blood pressure. The decline in global cognitive scores for participants with hypertension was 6.5 percent greater than for individuals with normal blood pressure. An average ARIC participant with normal blood pressure at baseline had a decline of 0.840 global cognitive z score points during the 20-year period compared with 0.880 points for participants with prehypertension and 0.896 points for patients with hypertension.

Individuals with high blood pressure who used medication had less cognitive decline during the 20 period than participants with high blood pressure who were untreated. A greater decline in global cognition scores also was associated with higher midlife blood pressure in white participants than in African Americans. Although it was noted that a relatively modest additional (cognitive) decline associated with hypertension, lower cognitive performance increases the risk for future dementia, and a shift in the distribution of cognitive scores, even to this degree, was enough to increase the public health burden of hypertension and prehypertension significantly.

Initiating treatment in late life might be too late to prevent this important shift. Epidemiological data, including their own study, supported midlife BP as a more important predictor of and possibly target for prevention of late-life cognitive function than was later-life BP.

What is hypertension or high blood pressure?

Blood pressure is the measure of strength or force exerted by blood on the walls of the blood vessels it is flowing through. This pressure largely depends on the efficiency with which your heart pumps the blood throughout the body. Harder the heart pumps, narrower the arteries become and greater will be the pressure exerted on the walls of the arteries. High blood pressure increases your risk for several diseases and conditions heart disease, chronic kidney disease (CKD), heart attack and stroke.

Symptoms of hypertension

High blood pressure is a silent killer and does not have any symptoms as such. So then how does one suspect high BP? Here are a few signs that are closely associated with hypertension and are seen in quite a few people. If you have any of these signs, it is good signal for you to go to a doctor and get your BP checked.

1. Headache: Some studies support the possibility of headache being a sign of hypertension. One of the studies found that 28% of the study participants who had recurrent headaches had high blood pressure. ‘Among Indians, early morning headache is a more common sign,’ says Dr Pradip Shah, consultant physician.

2. Breathlessness: High blood pressure is associated with thickening of the heart muscle, reducing the space for oxygen-rich blood to flow from the lungs to the heart ventricles from where it gets pumped to the entire body. This can cause the blood to flow back into the lungs resulting in breathing difficulties. Read more about Hypertension or high BP – types, causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and prevention

What is dementia? What causes it?

Dementia is a collective group of degenerative mental illnesses which is characterised by loss of cognitive function (beyond what is generally observed with normal ageing). The exact cause of dementia is still unknown but several situations can cause dementia. Degeneration of brain cells (neurons), infections that affect the brain and spine, brain abnormalities like hydrocephalus, head injuries and nutritional deficiencies are few factors that can cause dementia. Read more about Dementia  causes, symptoms, treatment and prevention

With inputs from IANS