By Sharnita Midgett
The impact that blood pressure has on dementia risk has often been studied, and new research continues to study this relation. This year, researchers found that an average higher blood pressure in black individuals may contribute to racial differences in dementia risk.
In an article titled, “Association Between Blood Pressure and Later-Life Cognition Among Black and White Individuals,” researchers analyzed data from five other studies related to heart health and stroke. These studies provided demographic data — information on race and sex — as well as data on brain health. Black Americans had a significantly faster decline in brain health and had a higher cumulative blood pressure than white Americans, according to the data in this study.
One of the researchers, Deborah Levine, MD, MPH, is an associate professor at the University of Michigan who has studied disparities in cardiovascular and brain health. She was motivated by her clinical experience seeing disparities across racial, ethnic, sociodemographic, and geographic backgrounds and was also “motivated by a sense of justice that disparities should be reduced if not eliminated.”