Dementia is now the fifth leading cause of death worldwide, affecting millions of people and placing a heavy burden on families, healthcare systems, and communities.
Since there is still no cure for dementia, doctors and researchers are focusing on ways to prevent it before it begins. One of the biggest areas of interest is whether controlling high blood pressure can help reduce the risk of developing dementia.
To explore this question, researchers from several universities launched a major study in China called the China Rural Hypertension Control Project Phase-3, or CRHCP-3. This is one of the largest studies of its kind. The research team focused on people living in rural areas of China, where access to healthcare is often limited and high blood pressure is common.
The study included nearly 34,000 participants across 326 villages. About half of them—over 17,000 people—were part of the intervention group, meaning they received special help to lower their blood pressure. The rest were in a usual care group, receiving the standard medical advice available in their area.
The intervention group was supported by trained community health workers, not doctors, who helped them take steps to reduce their blood pressure.
The goal was to bring down their systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) to below 130 mm Hg, and their diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) to under 80 mm Hg. This level of control is considered more intensive than the typical treatment targets in many countries.
The study followed participants for four years. At the end of that period, researchers found that the people in the intervention group had reduced their systolic blood pressure by an average of 22 mm Hg and their diastolic pressure by about 9 mm Hg, compared to those in the usual care group.
Even more importantly, those improvements in blood pressure were linked to a 15% lower risk of developing dementia and a 16% lower risk of developing cognitive impairment (memory and thinking problems that don’t meet the criteria for dementia).
These findings were published in Nature Medicine in April 2025 and offer new hope in the fight against dementia. Professor Yingxian Sun from the First Hospital of China Medical University, one of the study’s lead authors, emphasized that few previous studies have focused specifically on the connection between blood pressure medications and dementia risk.
One earlier trial, known as SPRINT-MIND, suggested a 17% drop in dementia risk with more aggressive blood pressure control, but the results were not statistically significant.
What makes the CRHCP-3 study stand out is its size, duration, and focus on dementia as a key outcome. The researchers believe these findings show that tighter blood pressure control could be a powerful way to help prevent dementia—especially in people who already have high blood pressure.
Professor Sun added that these results should encourage people with hypertension to take steps to manage their condition—not just to protect their heart, but also to keep their brain healthy.
Looking ahead, the research team hopes to use big data and artificial intelligence to improve early prediction of dementia and create more personalized prevention plans for people at risk.
Overall, this large study offers strong new evidence that managing blood pressure can be an important part of reducing dementia risk, especially in communities that are often underserved by the healthcare system.
If you care about blood pressure, please read studies about unhealthy habits that could increase high blood pressure risk, and people with severe high blood pressure should reduce coffee intake.
For more information about blood pressure, please see recent studies that early time-restricted eating could help improve blood pressure, and results showing plant-based foods could benefit people with high blood pressure.
The research findings can be found in Nature Medicine.
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