Study: Blood pressure drug may help battle Alzheimer’s

MILWAUKEE – Patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease who took a specific type of blood pressure drug that penetrates the brain were stabilized in their cognitive decline compared with patients who got different types of blood pressure medicine, according to a new study.

Doctors said the findings of the small study were intriguing and may provide a new area of research into a disease that has defied major treatment breakthroughs and that is expected to increase dramatically in coming years.

For years, high blood pressure has been known as a risk factor for developing dementia. And one previous Japanese study has showed that drugs known as brain-penetrating angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors were associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s.

However, the new study, which is published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology, is the first in which different groups of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease were given different types of blood pressure drugs.

What is especially interesting about this study is that all of the 162 patients had high blood pressure, all were given a blood pressure drug, and all had their blood pressure return to about normal.

But only those patients who got the brain-penetrating ACE inhibitors remained nearly stable after one year, based on their scores on a cognitive test known as the Mini-Mental State Examination, or MMSE.

The other patients, who got one of two other blood pressure drugs, either a non-brain-penetrating ACE inhibitor or a calcium channel blocker, saw a significant decline in their MMSE scores.

In addition to the better test scores, caregivers also noticed that the patients had stabilized, said lead author Takashi Ohrui, a researcher with Tokoku University School of Medicine in Japan.

The authors concluded that brain-penetrating ACE inhibitors might have benefits for both prevention and treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s.

The study’s findings are intriguing, said Steven DeKosky, chairman of neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

However, the study raised a couple of questions, he said. The patients who were stabilized got either of two different brain-penetrating ACE inhibitors. It is not clear whether the improvement was from one drug or the other, he said.

In addition, the patients who got non-brain-penetrating blood pressure drugs declined somewhat faster than would be expected, which raises questions about the study’s methodology, he said.