Alzheimer's Disease: Could Blood Pressure Drugs Help Treat It?

New findings published in the journal Alzheimer's Research and Therapy look at a link between a blood pressure drug and the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The behavioral health issue is the most common form of dementia--a progressive decline in mental ability that disrupts everyday life.

Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) and the National Institutes of Health found that the FDA-approved drug called candesartan reduced cell damage that's often linked to AD.

"Our findings make sense in many ways," senior study author Juan M. Saavedra, MD, from GUMC's Department of Pharmacology and Physiology, said in a news release. "Hypertension reduces blood flow throughout the body and brain and is a risk factor of Alzheimer's disease. Previous epidemiological studies found that Alzheimer's progression is delayed in hypertensive patients treated with ARBs."

During the study, researchers conducted an in-depth gene analyses of laboratory results that showed how candesartan helped prevent neuronal inflammation and other pathological processes, including alterations in amyloid metabolism--a hallmark of the illness. Then, researchers compared gene expression in the neuronal cultures with published gene databases of autopsy samples from Alzheimer's disease patients.

"The correlations were impressive -- the expression of 471 genes that were altered by excess glutamate in our cultures were also altered in brain autopsy samples from patients who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Candesartan normalized expression of these genes in our cultures," said first study author Abdel G. Elkahloun, PhD, from the Comparative Genomics and Cancer Genetics Branch of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

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