[Can the treatment of arterial hypertension help to prevent dementia?]

Arterial hypertension (AHT) and cognitive problems, especially dementia, are very prevalent among the elderly. AHT is a direct risk factor for vascular dementia and recent studies have shown that it also has repercussions on the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease. Thus, given the fact that there is currently no effective treatment, the prevention of dementia with the aim of delaying or even preventing its appearance is a priority. Moreover, it leads us to pose the question as to whether treating AHT can help prevent dementia. To answer this question, we present a review of the main studies involving interventions with antihypertensive drugs in the prevention of dementia that have been published to date. These trials and meta-analyses suggest that antihypertensive treatment could reduce the risk of dementia by 3-20%, although with no clear statistical significance. However, there are a number of methodological limitations that largely account for the lack of conclusive results in the different intervention studies and which make it possible to deduce that the treatment of AHT does clearly reduce the appearance of dementia. Therefore, clearly further studies on hypertension need to be conducted with the primary aim of appraising the appearance of cognitive impairment or dementia.