In addition to increasing the risk of heart attack or stroke, hypertension is capable of causing subtle but chronic brain damage, which can lead to dementia. One of the mechanisms through which elevated blood pressure can progressively damage the brain has now been identified by a collaboration between the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and the Department of Angiocardioneurology and Translational Medicine of the Irccs Neuromed in Pozzilli (Is). The perspective opened up by this study – published in Cardiovascular Research, a body of the European Society of Cardiology – is that of an innovative pharmacological intervention aimed at a specific biological target.
Research has investigated the role inflammation may have on brain damage related to high blood pressure. The Italian and German researchers, in particular, worked on two different animal models: the zebrafish and the mouse. “We were able to highlight – explains the engineer Lorenzo Carnevale, researcher of the Department of Angiocardioneurology and Translational Medicine – how the inflammatory state caused by hypertension can cause changes both in the cells of the immune system and in the endothelial ones (the cells that line the inner wall of blood vessels). This translates into a series of alterations at the level of the cerebral microcirculation, alterations that we know are linked to cognitive impairment”.
The research has also identified the ‘bridge’ that links hypertension to vascular damage: interferon γ, a molecule that acts on cells of the immune system. “In conditions of hypertension – continues Marialuisa Perrotta, researcher in the Department of Molecular Medicine of the Sapienza University of Rome and in the Department of Neuromed – interferon γ is a crucial component of the immune-inflammatory response, at the basis of brain damage which, over the long term, it contributes to the deterioration of cognitive functions”.
“In recent years – comments Daniela Carnevale, professor of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Medicine of the ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome and head of the CardioNeuroImmunology Research Unit of Neuromed – we have learned that hypertension is a much more complex phenomenon than was believed in the past. Of course, in a good percentage of patients the drugs that we currently have available help us a lot in bringing blood pressure back to the desired limits”.
“But it still remains difficult to limit the damage to the so-called ‘target’ organs, such as the brain. Our research will now explore in detail the role of interferon γ, with the possibility of arriving at innovative therapeutic strategies which, by intervening on the inflammatory mechanisms , and specifically on interferon γ, are able to prevent those damages which, over time, can lead to the development of dementia”, he concludes.