Higher Blood Pressure at Night Than in Daytime May Increase Alzheimer's Disease Risk

A study in Hypertension suggests higher blood pressure (BP) at night than during the day may elevate the risk of Alzheimer's disease in older men, reports ScienceDaily . Uppsala University researchers used observational data from 1,000 Swedish older men, monitored for up to 24 years, including men in their early seventies at the start of the study. "The risk of getting a dementia diagnosis was 1.64 times higher among men with reverse dipping excessively high blood pressure at night compared to those with normal dipping," said Uppsala's Xiao Tan. "Reverse dipping mainly increased the risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia." The authors said an interesting next step would be to explore whether the intake of BP-reducing antihypertensive drugs at night can lower older men's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.