In 2020, over 55 million people around the world lived with dementia. By 2050, estimates suggest this will be true for 139 million people. There is currently no cure for the condition, and approved medications focus on managing symptoms and slowing decline.
Understanding more about factors that could help prevent dementia are important for reducing its global disease burden. While some evidence suggests that lowering blood pressure in hypertensive patients reduces dementia risk, to what degree this is true remains unclear.
“Only a few randomized controlled trials have tested the effect of medications that reduce blood pressure on the risk of dementia, and none have looked at it as a primary trial endpoint, except for the SPRINT-MIND trial. Intensive blood pressure reduction was associated with a non-significant 17% reduction in dementia events among SPRINT-MIND participants.” said study author, Yingxian Sun, professor at the First Hospital of China Medical University, in a press release.
In the current study, researchers assessed the efficacy of reducing blood pressure to reduce dementia risk. To do so,they recruited 33,995 individuals aged 40 years and up with uncontrolled hypertension in rural China. Whereas 163 villages were randomly assigned to an intervention that led a multifaceted implementation strategy to reduce blood pressure, another 163 villages received usual care. The participants were followed up after 48 months.
Ultimately, those in the intervention group experienced a net reduction in systolic blood pressure of 22.0 mm Hg and a net reduction in diastolic blood pressure of 9.3 mm Hg compared to those under usual care. The findings translate to a roughly 15% reduced risk of all-cause dementia and a 16% lower risk for cognitive impairment without dementia. The researchers noted that there were fewer serious adverse events in the intervention group.
The findings may motivate patients with hypertension to reduce their blood pressure, said Sun. He added that he intends to ‘harness big data and artificial intelligence’ in the future to facilitate early prediction of dementia and to optimize individualized prevention and therapeutic strategies.
Sources: EurekAlert, Nature Medicine
