High Blood Pressure May Shrink Brains Study Says Condition Speeds Loss Of Memory In The Elderly

High blood pressure speeds the loss of memory and other cognitive abilities in the elderly, and causes their brains to shrink, a study found.

The changes occur in spite of drug therapy to control blood pressure, according to Gene E. Alexander, the study’s senior investigator.

The results suggest that more-effective treatment may be needed for elderly patients with high blood pressure, Alexander said.

But a neurologist who was not involved with the study said further work is needed before standard therapies are changed.

“The differences (in brain size and cognitive performance) were clearly significant, but seemed overall to be relatively small,” said Larry Goldstein, an associate professor of medicine and neurology at Duke University Medical Center and Durham Veterans Administration Hospital. “You have to factor in not only the potential benefits but all the other side effects and costs related to altering therapy in an elderly population.”

Elderly people with too-low blood pressure may faint, Goldstein noted.

Alexander and other researchers at the National Institutes on Aging of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., compared people with normal blood pressures in two age groups - 56-69 and 70-84 - with people who had longstanding histories of well-controlled high blood pressure.

Participants underwent brain-imaging scans to evaluate physical characteristics and neuropsychological tests to assess general intellectual function, short-term memory, attention span, language function and other areas.

“None of the patients with high blood pressure had ever had a stroke, and none had other diagnosed medical conditions,” Alexander said. “But they had more brain atrophy than those with normal blood pressure, and this effect was worsened by aging.”

Participants with high blood pressure also showed increased memory loss compared with the participants with normal blood pressure, he said.

One of the study’s possible limitations was the small number of patients evaluated - 27 with high blood pressure and 20 in the control group.

The study appears in the July edition of Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.