Taking Blood Pressure And Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs May Not Improve Memory

A new study published in Neurology has found that blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering drugs may not provide benefits to the brain.

Intake of drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure offer healing benefits to the heart, however, such drugs do not provide any similar benefits to the brain, finds a study published in Neurology. Hypertension-lowering medications such as candesartan plus hydrochlorothiazide and cholesterol-lowering drug rosuvastatin, if taken separately or in combination, did not slow decline in thinking and memory in senior people.//

"Heart disease has been linked to problems with thinking and memory, so we examined whether managing heart disease with medications like blood pressure and cholesterol lowering drugs can reduce some of those cognitive problems," said study author Jackie Bosch, PhD, of the Population Health Research Institute and the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

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Hypertension affects about a billion individuals worldwide and is a silent killer. Medication & lifestyle modification is the cornerstone of an effective antihypertensive treatment.

‘the results of the study reveal that consuming medicines to lower blood pressure and cholesterol may not improve cognitive ability in patients.’

The study involved 1,626 people with an average age of 74 who had a moderate risk of heart disease, defined as having a 1 percent chance of having a heart attack or some other heart-related event during the year. Of the group, 45 percent had high blood pressure.

Participants were given thinking and memory tests at the beginning of the study. They received physical checkups every six months and then had thinking and memory tests again at the end of the study, an average of about six years later.

Participants took either a daily pill of 16 milligrams (mg) of candesartan and 12.5 mg of hydrochlorothiazide or a daily pill of 10 mg of rosuvastatin, a combination of the two, or placebo.

Blood Pressure Screening
Hypertension accounts for nearly 6% of deaths worldwide.

Researchers found that lowering blood pressure, or cholesterol, or both, with these drugs neither reduced nor increased the rate of cognitive decline in study participants when compared to those taking placebo.

"Statin use has previously been associated with cognitive impairment, but this study demonstrated that there was none, which is an important finding for those taking statins," said Bosch.

Combination Therapy for High Blood Pressure - Monotherapy - Options - Reference
Anti-hypertensive agents are still the treatment drugs for hypertension but recent advances indicate that combination therapy may be a more effective form of treatment.

Bosch added that taking medications for six years may not be long enough to prevent cognitive decline, so longer studies are needed.

A limitation of the study was that participants chose to participate, meaning they may have been healthier and at a lower risk of thinking and memory problems than the average population.

High Blood Pressure
High blood pressure or hypertension is defined as a blood pressure of above 140 mm Hg (systolic) and or 90mm Hg (diastolic).

The study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and AstraZeneca, which sells versions of the drugs studied.

Source-Eurekalert