FRIDAY, April 7 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment for high blood pressure may protect against dementia in older patients, according to a report published online April 6 in Stroke.
Rita Peila, Ph.D., an epidemiologist at the National Institute on Aging, and colleagues analyzed data from the long-term Honolulu-Asia Aging Study on Japanese American men born between 1900 and 1919 to determine the effects of antihypertensive treatment on cognitive decline and dementia. A total of 848 men who had midlife hypertension, some of whom were never treated, and were without dementia at age 77 were included in the study.
At three- and six-year follow-ups, those who were maintained on antihypertensive therapy showed a slower decline in cognitive function according to the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument and other tests. For each additional year of treatment, the risk of dementia dropped by about 3 percent, with a 60 percent reduction noted with greater than 12 years of treatment.
"Using data from a large cohort of prospectively followed Japanese American elderly men, we found the longer the duration of antihypertensive medication use, the significantly lower the risk for dementia," the authors conclude. "Our data also suggest that long-term antihypertensive treatment could slow the rate of cognitive decline in nondemented subjects."
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