Late-life longitudinal blood pressure trajectories as predictor of dementia

Allen T. C. Lee, Ada W. T. Fung, Marcus Richards, Wai C Chan, Helen F. K. Chiu, Ruby S. Y. Lee, Linda C. W. Lam*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    4 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    While hypertension is widely recognized as a risk factor for dementia, few observational studies and clinical trials fully accounted for the effect of age on blood pressure (BP) changes prior to dementia onset. In this territory-wide population-based longitudinal study of 16,591 community-living dementia-free older adults, we followed their BP and cognitive status and tested if loss of longitudinal increase in BP in late life was associated with higher dementia risk in 6 years, with consideration of the confounding effects of hypertension, hypotension, BP variability, and other health problems and behaviours and, in the data analysis, exclusion of individuals who developed dementia within 3 years after baseline to minimize risk of reverse causality. Over 72,997 person-years of follow-up, 1429 participants developed dementia. We found that loss of longitudinal increase in systolic BP (defined as SBP increased by either < 10 mmHg or 10%) from baseline to Year 3 was independently associated with higher risk of incident dementia at Years 4 to 6 (adjusted OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.02–1.45, p = 0.03; adjusted OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.03–1.50, p = 0.02; respectively). Our findings suggest that late-life SBP trajectory changes might independently predict dementia onset and highlight the importance of including longitudinal BP monitoring in dementia risk assessment.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number1630
    JournalScientific Reports
    Volume12
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 31 Jan 2022

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • General

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