There are several strategies for warding off dementia, including altering your diet, getting more exercise, and partaking in activities like mahjong or crossword puzzles. But a new study found that certain medications can also help reduce your risk of developing dementia, meaning you might be improving your odds without even realizing it. The study, published in Alzheimer's & Dementia on Monday, highlighted four common heart drugs that may lower your dementia risk in older age.
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“We can see a clear link between long-term use—five years or more—of these drugs and reduced risk of dementia in older age," co-lead study author Mozhu Ding, PhD, assistant professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, in Sweden, said in a press release.
The common drugs included prescriptions you might have in your medicine cabinet, namely:
- Blood pressure medications (antihypertensive drugs)
- Cholesterol-lowering drugs
- Diuretics (water pills used to clear fluid out and lower blood pressure)
- Blood-thinning drugs
Researchers came to this conclusion using data from Swedish national registers, reviewing information from roughly 88,000 people over the age of 70 who were diagnosed with dementia between 2011 and 2016. They were compared against 880,000 control subjects without a dementia diagnosis.
Renin-Angiotensin System (RAS)-acting agents, one medication used to treat high blood pressure, may specifically help ward off Alzheimer's by protecting certain mechanisms in the brain, the authors noted. Diuretics could preserve potassium or uric acid, effectively "exerting antioxidant and neuroprotective effects."
Cholesterol is also linked to an increased risk of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia because it can cause plaque to build up in blood vessels and affect blood flow to the brain. As a result, it makes sense that medications lowering cholesterol, such as statins, would help mitigate risk. Researchers noted that dementia risk was even lower when people took a combination of cholesterol-lowering drugs and blood pressure medications.
"Previous studies have focused on individual drugs and specific patient groups but in this study, we take a broader approach," Alexandra Wennberg, PhD, affiliated researcher at the Institute of Environmental Medicine and co-lead study author, said in the press release.
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But while medications to treat these conditions have been shown to lower dementia risk, researchers in the present study focused on how the length of time on the drugs affected risk.
For example, taking blood pressure medications for 10 or more years showed the biggest reduction in risk, dropping chances by 25 percent. When people took two to three of these treatments, that risk decreased by 27 to 30 percent.
That's not to say that all cardiovascular disease drugs are created equal in terms of dementia risk, however. The study found one form that can spike your risk of dementia: antiplatelet drugs.
While they're used to "prevent strokes and stop platelets from clumping together," they may also increase the risk of microbleeds in the brains, which is associated with cognitive decline, according to the press release. People who took these drugs, including aspirin, had a 13 to 25 percent higher risk of dementia.
In addition, using any of the four drugs that had positive effects for a "short-term" period, defined as between one and four years, also increases risk by a whopping 13 to 30 percent.
This may be because people taking medications for fewer years were prescribed them later in life. Midlife has previously been identified as an important period for dementia risk, meaning those who weren't taking medications to treat their heart issues at this point may have already "progressed beyond a point for the drugs to have a beneficial impact on risk," the study authors wrote.
