$21.6M Grant Powers Research to Understand Link Between High Blood Pressure, Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease, and Dementia
$21.6M Grant Powers Research to Understand Link Between High Blood Pressure, Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease, and Dementia
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Sophia Friesen
Manager, Research Communications, 91麻豆天美直播
Email: sophia.friesen@hsc.utah.edu
In six massive laboratory freezers at the University of Utah, nearly 40,000 blood samples wait in frozen stasis.
They represent four years of data from one of the largest studies of hypertension in the U.S.: an intensive blood pressure intervention study called the SPRINT trial. And hidden in many of these blood samples are subtle chemical signals that point to their donors鈥 current and future brain health conditions鈥攁mong them Alzheimer鈥檚 disease and related dementias, the most common cause of disability among adults over 65.
Now, powered by a $21.6M, five-year National Institutes of Health grant, researchers are poised to unlock this informational treasure trove and uncover the connections between hypertension, Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, and dementia.
Linking blood pressure to brain health
High blood pressure is one of the biggest modifiable risk factors for dementia鈥攑rogressive problems with memory and thinking that interfere with daily life. The most common kind of dementia is Alzheimer鈥檚 disease, caused by protein buildup in the brain, but dementia can also be caused by problems with the blood vessels in the brain. It鈥檚 unknown exactly how high blood pressure harms the brain, or how blood pressure management strategies might help.
The project will analyze the vault of blood samples for molecules that specifically herald either Alzheimer鈥檚 disease or other forms of cognitive decline. The project is funded by the National Institute on Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health. professor of population health sciences at 91麻豆天美直播, investigator at the VA Salt Lake City Healthcare System, and a principal investigator on the study, explains that the project aims to answer a few big questions:
- "How does lowering blood pressure more intensively affect brain health?
- Does [hypertension treatment] affect brain health through pathways around Alzheimer鈥檚 disease鈥攑rotein plaques and tangles鈥攐r is it through the blood vessels themselves?
- How does having Alzheimer鈥檚 pathology in your brain impact how we treat your high blood pressure?"
New technology to find new connections
Key to answering these questions will be the researchers鈥 use of a new technology: a recently discovered blood biomarker that diagnoses Alzheimer鈥檚-related brain changes nearly as well as the gold standards of a brain PET scan or cerebrospinal fluid sample.
The blood biomarkers will be cross-referenced with comprehensive health information to determine how the effectiveness of blood pressure treatment can change based on genetics, demographics, and existing health conditions. For instance, the study aims to find out whether intensive hypertension treatments still reduce dementia risk for people with genetic susceptibilities to dementia. Answering these questions will help doctors provide targeted interventions to help each patient.
Rachel Hess, MD, associate vice president for research at U of U Health, emphasizes the value of the unique U of U-based biobank that makes this study possible. 鈥淭he University of Utah is proud to be the home for the SPRINT biospecimens, which are a legacy of all of the SPRINT participants and researchers across the country,鈥 Hess says. 鈥淭his biobank lets us query samples that could be over a decade old and answer new questions with new biomarkers to gain novel insights into how hypertension control can change the course of aging for millions of Americans.鈥
Helping patients and driving science forward
behavioral neurologist at Banner Alzheimer鈥檚 Institute in Phoenix and a principal investigator on the funded study, says, 鈥淲e hope that the results of the study will help people by contributing to our understanding of how and in whom hypertension confers the highest risk for dementia, guiding more individualized treatment for hypertension, and ultimately lowering dementia risk in those individuals using medicines for blood pressure.鈥
Bress adds, 鈥淭he other thing that's crucial about this grant, which is probably one of the biggest things, is we're going to post all the data publicly.鈥 Data on five different blood biomarkers will be matched with clinical cognitive outcomes and dementia diagnoses鈥攁 detailed resource to power future studies. 鈥淭his is going to be one of the largest repositories of its kind in the world.鈥
behavioral neurologist at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School and a principal investigator on the study, says, 鈥淭he advent of blood-based biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease will change the landscape for screening, diagnosis, and treating cognitive impairments in older adults. The results from this study will be crucial to understanding how we might implement these new tools in a 鈥榬eal world鈥 population.鈥
鈥淭his innovative research uses novel-blood based biomarkers and clinical trial data to decode dementia pathology and, in doing so, will provide answers about how blood pressure affects brain health and how we can best treat people living with both Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease and hypertension. Ultimately, this work can help protect people鈥檚 memory, independence, and well-being,鈥 says Angela Fagerlin, PhD, chair of population health sciences at U of U Health.
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This work will be funded by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (grant number 1R01AG096179-01). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
This project was made possible by a strategic investment from the office of the associate vice president for research, the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Internal Medicine at 91麻豆天美直播, and the Utah Diabetes and Metabolism Research Center (UDMRC) office. Other researchers who contributed to the success of the grant include Angela Fagerlin, Scott Summers, John Inadomi, Rachel Hess, Alfred Cheung, Tom Greene, and Yizhe Xu.