Blood Pressure Drugs May Help in the Fight Against Alzheimer's

In another case of a drug that was developed for one condition turning out to be beneficial for another, researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that drugs that are now prescribed for hypertension have the possibility to be able to prevent Alzheimer's and other diseases that result in cognitive deterioration.

The research was conducted over that last two years and they have examined more than 1,500 drugs that are currently on the market to treat other diseases to see what if any effect they would have on in cognitive diseases.

The researchers were able to identify 7 out of 55 drugs that are used for the treatment of hypertension that are also able to prevent the production of beta-amyloid in the brain, which has been identified as having a role in Alzheimer's disease, mostly related to memory loss and dementia.

In the study, mice that had been genetically altered to develop Alzheimer's disease beta-amyloid production in the brain and the cognitive loss that results where shown to greatly improve when they were given the anti-hypertensive agent Valsartan, which was found to prevent the production of beta-amyloid in the brain. And it did this at a much lower dose than would normally be prescribed for hypertension in humans. The other drugs that also had a positive result are Propranolol HCI, Carvedilol, Losartan, Nicardipine HCI, Amiloride HCI and Hydralazine HCI.

The next step for the researchers is going to be testing on humans to verify the results and hopefully come out with the same results as they did with the mice. And the researchers want to begin the trials as soon as possible. The tests have only begun and are in a very early experimental stage and so far there is no clinical evidence except for what they observed in the patients being treated for hypertension, which was quite by accident. One of the most important things they need to determine is the dose that they can give that will be effectual against the Alzheimer's, without affecting the patients blood pressure by accident.