Antihypertensive Agents and Risk of Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor and Dementia: A Population-Based Prospective Study (NEDICES)

Background: Recent interest in antihypertensive agents, especially calcium channel blockers, has been sparked by the notion that these medications may be neuroprotective. A modest literature, with mixed results, has examined whether these medications might lower the odds or risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD) or dementia. There are no data for essential tremor (ET). Objective: To examine the association between antihypertensive use (defined broadly and by individual subclasses) and ET, PD and dementia. For each disorder, we used cross-sectional data (association with prevalent disease) and prospective data (association with incident disease). Methods: Prospective population-based study in Spain enrolling 5,278 participants at baseline. Results: Use of antihypertensive medications (aside from β-blockers) was similar in prevalent ET cases and controls. Baseline use of antihypertensive agents was not associated with reduced risk of incident ET. Antihypertensive medication use was not associated with prevalent or incident PD. Calcium channel blocker use was marginally reduced in prevalent dementia cases (OR adjusted = 0.63, p = 0.06) but was not associated with reduced risk of incident dementia (RR adjusted = 1.02, p = 0.95). Conclusions: We did not find evidence of a protective effect of antihypertensive medications in these three neurodegenerative disorders.