High blood pressure, also called hypertension, is a big problem. It can lead to serious diseases like dementia.
Dementia is a sickness that makes it hard for people to think, remember things, and reason. This happens because the blood doesn’t flow properly to the brain when people have high blood pressure.
To find ways to prevent dementia, we need to understand better why and how these problems happen to people with high blood pressure.
Studying High Blood Pressure and Dementia
A team of scientists led by Costantino Iadecola from Weill Cornell Medical College did a special study. They found that high blood pressure causes changes in the brain.
It activates a type of immune cells called “perivascular macrophages.” When these cells are activated, they cause something called “oxidative stress” in the brain’s blood vessels. This stress is related to dementia.
A Hormone’s Role in High Blood Pressure and Dementia
The scientists found that a hormone called “angiotensin II” is important in this process. This hormone is linked to high blood pressure.
When angiotensin II activates the perivascular macrophages, it causes more oxidative stress. This leads to problems with blood flow in the brain and thinking problems.
Testing Ideas in Mice
The scientists used mice to test their ideas. They removed the perivascular macrophages from the brains of mice with high blood pressure.
This reduced the damage to the mice’s blood vessels and helped them think better.
What Can We Do About It?
These findings mean that we might be able to help prevent dementia in people with high blood pressure. We could do this by targeting the things that activate perivascular macrophages.
This could be a new way to help people with high blood pressure avoid getting dementia.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about a key contributor to high blood pressure, and your age may determine which blood pressure number matters most.
For more information about nutrition, please see recent studies about how tea and coffee influence your risk of high blood pressure, and results showing this olive oil could reduce blood pressure in healthy people.
The study was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
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