Hypertension Medication May Lower Alzheimer's Risk

Drugs that help lower blood pressure also helps reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, a new study has found.

These drugs include diuretics, beta blockers and calcium channel blockers, with diuretics showing the greatest benefits to study participants.

Dr.Peter P. Zandi, assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and co-author of the study, says that even though diuretics showed the greatest reduction in Alzheimer's disease risk, "we also found some evidence that there was a reduced risk with the use of calcium channel blockers".

A possible explanation for this risk reduction is that high blood pressure increases the risk of brain-wasting disease; thus, drugs that lower blood pressure also lower Alzheimer's disease risk.

The study looked at data on nearly 3,300 elderly people living in Cache County, Utah, of which more than 1,500 used hypertension medication. Data were collected from 1995 to 1998. by the end of that period, 104 participants had developed Alzheimer's.

People who were taking blood pressure medication at the beginning of the study had a decreased risk of Alzheimer's, compared to those who were not. Participants who took diuretics had a reduction of more than 70% in the risk of Alzheimer's. Diuretics contain additional components that maintain the blood level of potassium. Calcium channel blockers caused a risk reduction of up to 50%, and other blood pressure drugs had little effect on the risk of Alzheimer's.

Dr. Zandi says it is still unclear why some blood pressure medication reduces the development of Alzheimer's and other does not. He also warns against changing hypertension medication on the basis of these findings only, as this hypothesis needs to be explored through other studies as well.

The report was published in the March 13 online issue of the Archives of Neurology.

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