Antihypertensive Drugs May Protect
Against Alzheimer’s Disease
Drugs may promote memory function and reduce
cognitive deterioration without influencing blood pressure.
Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that
the drug carvedilol, currently prescribed for the treatment of
hypertension, may lessen the degenerative impact of
Alzheimer’s disease and promote healthy memory functions. The
new findings are published in two studies in Neurobiology of
Aging and the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.
"These studies are certainly very exciting, and suggest for
the first time that certain antihypertensive drugs already
available to the public may independently influence memory
functions, while reducing degenerative pathological features
of the Alzheimer’s disease brain," said study author, Dr
Giulio Maria Pasinetti, Saunders Family Professor of Neurology
and Director of the Center of Excellence for Novel Approaches
to Neurotherapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.
Dr Pasinetti’s team found for the first time that carvedilol,
a blood pressure lowering agent, is capable of exerting
activities that significantly reduce Alzheimer’s disease-type
brain and memory degeneration. This benefit was achieved
without blood pressure lowering activity in mice genetically
modified to develop Alzheimer’s disease-type brain
degeneration and memory impairment. These data were published
in Neurobiology of Aging.
In a second study published in the Journal of
Alzheimer’s Disease, the research team led by Dr Pasinetti
assessed how mice learnt new tasks and information and
recalled past information chemically stored in the brain. They
found that carvedilol treatment was capable of promoting
memory function, based on assessments of learning new tasks
and information and recall of past information.
In the study, a group of mice received carvedilol treatment
and the other group did not. The scientists conducted
behavioural and learning tests with each group of mice, and
determined that it took the mice in the carvedilol-treated
group significantly less time to remember tasks than the other
group.
"Ongoing clinical research is in progress to test the benefits
of carvedilol, which may prove to be an effective agent in the
treatment of symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease," said Dr
Pasinetti. "We look forward to further studying this drug in
the human population."