Aging, Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Blood Pressure - Hypertension, JAMA / 14.12.2021
Dementia Risk and Systolic Blood Pressure: A U-Shaped Association
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Jan Willem van Dalen, PhD
Department of Neurology
Donders Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Cognition
Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen
Department of Neurology
The Netherlands3Department of Public and Occupational Health
Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Although high systolic blood pressure in midlife has consistently been reported as a condition that increases the risk of developing dementia in old age, reports regarding this relationship in older people have been inconsistent. One potential reason for this, is that the relationship between systolic blood pressure and dementia in later life may be U-shaped, meaning that both individuals with low and with high systolic blood pressure are at increased incident dementia risk.
This study combined data from several longitudinal cohort studies specifically designed to study incident dementia in older people, to investigate whether these U-shaped relationships exist, and in which age ranges they appear. We included more than 16,500 people aged 60 and older, with over 2,700 incident dementia cases.
Also, we aimed to investigate whether these observational associations might be caused by confounding, differences in mortality, or result from opposite relationships between certain subgroups of individuals.
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