In a study from the University of Copenhagen and Yale, scientists found high blood pressure may affect conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease by interfering with the brain’s waste management system.
Maintaining blood vessel health could therefore help stave off cognitive decline.
If you have high blood pressure, the force of the blood pushing against the artery walls is consistently too high. The heart has to work harder to pump blood.
Blood pressure is measured in millimeters of mercury (mm Hg). In general, hypertension is a blood pressure reading of 130/80 mm Hg or higher.
High blood pressure causes stiffening and elasticity loss in blood vessels, which hinders the clearance of waste molecules from the brain.
Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.
In most people with the disease — those with the late-onset type symptoms first appear in their mid-60s.
Using a rat model of hypertension, the team examined how the condition affects the movement of cerebrospinal fluid into and interstitial fluid out of brain cells.
The researchers tracked the flow of cerebrospinal fluid and found that the hypertensive rats exhibited larger ventricles, decreased brain volume, and impaired fluid transport.
They concluded that blood pressure interferes with the clearance of macromolecules from the brain, such as the Alzheimer’s pathology protein β-amyloid.
Treatments targeting high blood pressure could in turn reduce β-amyloid buildup and delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.
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The study was conducted by Maiken Negergaard et al and published in JNeurosci.
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