BALTIMORE: Researchers searching for new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease recently made a startling observation.
They found that people with a genetic predisposition to high blood pressure also had a lower risk for Alzheimer’s, a fatal condition that robs its victims of their memory.
That seemed counter-intuitive until they examined closely. The people with the genetic link to hypertension but who weren’t getting Alzheimer’s were being treated for their high blood pressure.
“It’s likely that this protective effect is coming from antihypertensive drugs,” said the study co-author.
Researchers from around the world worked on the study, which examined genetic data from 17,008 people with Alzheimer’s and 37,154 people free of the disease.
The research team was actually looking for something else – links between Alzheimer’s disease and health conditions like diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol. Specifically, they were looking for links to conditions that could be modified, like high blood pressure. But the assumption going into the project was that these modifiable conditions might be a contributor to Alzheimer’s risk.
Amazingly, the strongest correlation that emerged was a significant association between higher systolic blood pressure and reduced Alzheimer’s risk…