Associations between blood pressure across adulthood and late-life brain structure and pathology in the neuroscience substudy of the 1946 British birth cohort (Insight 46): an epidemiological study

Publication date: Available online 20 August 2019Source: The Lancet NeurologyAuthor(s): Christopher A Lane, Josephine Barnes, Jennifer M Nicholas, Carole H Sudre, David M Cash, Thomas D Parker, Ian B Malone, Kirsty Lu, Sarah-Naomi James, Ashvini Keshavan, Heidi Murray-Smith, Andrew Wong, Sarah M Buchanan, Sarah E Keuss, Elizabeth Gordon, William Coath, Anna Barnes, John Dickson, Marc Modat, David ThomasSummaryBackgroundMidlife hypertension confers increased risk for cognitive impairment in late life. The sensitive period for risk exposure and extent that risk is mediated through amyloid or vascular-related mechanisms are poorly understood. We aimed to identify if, and when, blood pressure or change in blood pressure during adulthood were associated with late-life brain structure, pathology, and cognition.MethodsParticipants were from Insight 46, a neuroscience substudy of the ongoing longitudinal Medical Research Council National Survey of Health and Development, a birth cohort that initially comprised 5362 individuals born throughout mainland Britain in one week in 1946. Participants aged 69–71 years received T1 and FLAIR volumetric MRI, florbetapir amyloid-PET imaging, and cognitive assessment at University College London (London, UK); all participants were dementia-free. Blood pressure measurements had been collected at ages 36, 43, 53, 60–64, and 69 years. We also calculated blood pressure change variables between ages. Primary outcome measures were white matter hyper...
Source: The Lancet Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research