Long-Term Blood Pressure Control Cuts Dementia Risk, Study Finds

Long-term treatment of high blood pressure reduced dementia risk by 15% in a large Chinese study presented at the European Society of Cardiology congress in Munich.

The study enrolled 33,995 people from 326 rural villages and followed them for more than seven years. Participants averaged 63 years of age, and 61% were women. Half received standard hypertension care, while the other half received intensive support from non-physician health workers to help them reach blood-pressure targets.

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Hypertension is a known modifiable risk factor for dementia.

The intensive program produced a much larger reduction in systolic blood pressure. After seven years, including four years of active study and three years of follow-up, systolic pressure had fallen by an average of 17.6 mmHg in the intervention group. The reduction in the comparison group averaged 2.4 mmHg.

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There have so far been few long-term studies showing that lowering blood pressure can prevent dementia at population level.

Dementia occurred in 8.85% of the intensive-treatment group, compared with 10.55% of the control group. The risk of cognitive impairment without dementia was also 13% lower among those receiving intensive care. The intervention group recorded fewer serious adverse events, at 47.15%, compared with 49.78% in the standard-care group.

Yingxian Sun of the First University Hospital of China Medical University in Shenyang said hypertension is a modifiable dementia risk factor, but few long-term studies have shown that lowering blood pressure can prevent dementia at population level. Sun leads China’s rural hypertension control program.

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Remarkably, after seven years the intervention group had a 15 percent lower risk of dementia than the control group.