Age of hypertension onset and cognitive function in the elderly: an observational study from the NHANES 2011–2014

This study aims to evaluate the association between age of hypertension onset and cognitive function in a representative sample of US older adults.

We assessed 2334 elderly adults (including 1655 hypertensive patients) who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2014. We used the age when the participants were first informed by the doctor that they had hypertension or were first clinically diagnosed with hypertension as the age of onset of hypertension. The Digit Symbol Substitution test (DSST), the Animal Fluency test, the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s disease (CERAD), and a composite-z score calculated by summing z-scores from these three individual tests, were used to assess cognitive function.

Participants with hypertension onset age < 35 years (early onset hypertension) had the worst performance in almost all cognitive tests, followed by those with onset age ≥ 65 years. Compared with those without hypertension, early onset hypertension was associated with − 4.15 (95% CI − 6.63, − 1.68), − 1.10 (95% CI − 2.08, − 0.12), − 0.75 (95% CI − 1.91, 0.42), and − 0.56 (95% CI − 0.94, − 0.19) scores for DSST, animal fluency test, CERAD, and composite z-score. Participants with early onset hypertension (onset age < 35 years) had higher odds for cognitive decline defined by DSST (OR: 3.28, 95% CI 1.94, 5.54) and composite z-score (OR: 1.77, 95% CI 1.07, 2.92).

Early onset hypertension was associated with the worst performance in cognitive function and an increased odds of cognitive decline in the elderly.