Cognitive decline and dementia can stem from illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease and conditions like hypertension that damage blood vessels in the brain. People with both may have an even greater risk of developing cognitive impairment, a new Yale study finds.
This additive effect, say researchers, will likely have an outsized impact on medically underserved populations, which makes it imperative that racially diverse trials be conducted to evaluate how to treat both contributions to dementia effectively.
For the study — published September 4, 2024, in Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association — the researchers used data from the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial, which took place between 2010 and 2015 and included adults aged 50 or older with hypertension. All told, the new study included data from 467 racially diverse trial participants aged 60 or older…
Read the full article here.
