Is hypertension a predictor of hippocampal atrophy in Alzheimer's disease?

Abstract

Hypertension affects millions of people worldwide and has been reported in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) some decades before the onset of the disease. High blood pressure has also been related to pathological manifestations of AD (Skoog and Gustafson, 2006). The hippocampus is a highly vulnerable and plastic structure that gets damaged by stimuli, e.g. hypoxia. In order to establish whether hypertension could damage the hippocampus and play a role in its atrophy we undertook a study to examine the relationship between hypertension and hippocampal atrophy in patients with AD.