Alzheimer’s dementia: pathogenesis and impact of cardiovascular risk factors on cognitive decline

ABSTRACT

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia manifesting as alterations in cognitive abilities, behavior, and deterioration in memory which is progressive, leading to gradual worsening of symptoms. Major pathological features of AD are accumulations of neuronal amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, with early lesions appearing primarily in the hippocampus, the area of the brain involved in memory and learning. Cardiovascular-related risk factors are believed to play a crucial role in disease development and the acceleration of cognitive deterioration by worsening cerebral perfusion, promoting disturbances in amyloid clearance. Current evidence supports hypertension, hypotension, heart failure, stroke and coronary artery diseases as potential factors playing a role in cognitive decline in patients with Alzheimer’s dementia. Although dementia due to cardiovascular deficits is more strongly linked to the development of vascular dementia, a stepwise decline in cognition, recent researches have also discovered its deleterious influence on AD development.

KEYWORDS:

• Alzheimer’s disease
• cardiovascular risk factors
• cardiovascular disease
• neurodegenerative disease
• dementia
• stroke
• cognitive decline

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Contribution statement

Pitchaya Wanleenuwat: Conceptualization, Project administration, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Piotr Iwanowski: Project administration, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – review & editing. Wojciech Kozubski: Resources, Supervision, Visualization, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The article was not funded.