Scientists have found a new link between high blood pressure and reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
The link has been found in genetic studies, suggesting people at risk of high blood pressure also enjoy reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
One possibility is that the the protection comes from drugs taken to tackle blood pressure.
Dr Robert Scott of the MRC Epidemiology Unit at Cambridge University, UK, and his team developed a technique to see if risk factors, such as blood pressure, smoking, and cholesterol levels, might play a causative role. The new method took into account genetic information.
This showed that genetic variants that predict higher systolic blood pressure are associated with a decreased risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
They say this could mean that high blood pressure may play a protective role against Alzheimer’s disease – or it may be the effect of widespread use of blood pressure medication.
Full details are published today (17 June) in the journal PLoS Medicine. They warn that the reliability of these results "depends on the ability of the genetic variants used in the analyses to predict blood pressure, and the assumption that these genetic variants do not affect other risk factors".
The authors also point out that the study included an exclusively European population, so the causal link may not be valid for other ethnic groups.
But "since there is a strong association between higher blood pressure gene scores and exposure to antihypertensive treatments, there is a need to evaluate the possible protective role of some of these substances against Alzheimer’s disease, independent of their effects on blood pressure," they conclude.
Scott, R. et al PLoS 17 June 2015 [abstract]
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