High blood pressure linked to faster cognitive decline, dementia risk - Study Finds

Now, researchers from the University of Michigan say people with hypertension may also experience a faster deterioration in their cognitive abilities (thinking skills, decision making, memory) in comparison to those with normal blood pressure.

Originally, researchers set out to determine if fluctuations in long-term blood pressure control may somewhat explain why Hispanic Americans experience a 50-percent higher risk of developing dementia by the end of their lives in comparison to non-Hispanic white people living in the United States.

“Our findings suggest that high blood pressure causes faster cognitive decline, and that taking hypertension medication slows the pace of that decline,” says lead study author Deborah Levine, M.D., M.P.H., director of the University of Michigan’s Cognitive Health Services Research Program and a professor of internal medicine at the U-M’s academic medical center, in a media release.

“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,” Levine adds.

The immense size of this dataset helped researchers track and trace blood pressure readings and subsequent fluctuations on cognitive test scores among both Hispanic and non-Hispanic white adults in a much clearer manner than any one smaller data set could.

More specifically, the data encompassed 22,095 non-Hispanic white adults and 2,475 Hispanic adults.

To start, average systolic blood pressure was lower among Hispanic adults in comparison to non-Hispanic white adults (132.5 mmHg compared with 134 mmHg).

However, when researchers focused solely on the two studies that had deliberately recruited Hispanics, they noted an undeniably faster decline in overall cognitive performance among Hispanics in comparison to the non-Hispanic white group.

Importantly, though, blood pressure differences between those two groups didn’t appear to explain this cognitive decline difference.