WEDNESDAY, April 16 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with a history of high blood pressure may be at increased risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, according to research presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Neurology in Chicago.
Christiane Reitz, M.D., of Columbia University in New York City, and colleagues assessed 918 individuals without prevalent mild cognitive impairment at baseline. After a mean follow-up of 4.7 years, they identified 334 cases of incident mild cognitive impairment, 160 cases of amnestic mild cognitive impairment and 174 cases of non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment.
After adjusting for age and gender, the researchers found that hypertension was associated with an increased risk of both all-cause and non-amnestic mild cognitive impairment (hazard ratios 1.4 and 1.7, respectively) but not amnestic mild cognitive impairment (HR, 1.1). They observed that hypertension was associated with declines in executive function score, but not with memory or language scores. They also found that neither the presence of the APOE e4 genotype nor the use of antihypertensive medication modified the association between hypertension and mild cognitive impairment.
"These findings suggest that prevention and treatment of hypertension may have an important impact in lowering the risk of cognitive impairment," the authors conclude.
Abstract
