Scientists have discovered how high blood pressure leads to vascular dementia, raising hopes for the first drug treatments.
Sufferers have narrower arteries, which cuts flow to the brain and starves cells of nutrients so they become damaged and die.
Experts have struggled to understand how high blood pressure causes this. However, the latest study, using mice, reveals it disrupts messaging within artery cells.
This occurs when two cell structures move further apart, stopping signals about artery widening reaching their target.
Researchers hope this finding will be confirmed in humans.
Professor Adam Greenstein, at Manchester University, said: “By uncovering how high blood pressure causes arteries in the brain to remain constricted, our research reveals a new avenue for drug discovery that may help to find the first treatment for vascular dementia.
“Allowing blood to return as normal to damaged areas of the brain will be crucial to stopping this devastating condition in its tracks.”
Vascular dementia is the second most common type of dementia and affects around 150,000. The brain’s arteries normally respond to changes in blood pressure but if consistently high, they stay narrow.
It leads to loss of energy, lack of concentration and poor memory.
Prof Greenstein added that drugs discovered could also treat Alzheimer’s, “which causes very similar damage to blood vessels”.
The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Prof Sir Nilesh Samani, BHF medical director, said the symptoms “are hugely distressing for patients”.
He called it “exciting research” that raises “hope that there may soon be a way to prevent this illness from destroying more lives”.
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