Having high blood pressure in your 30s is associated with worse brain health around age 75, especially for men, according to a new study.

The researchers compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans of older adults who had high blood pressure between the ages of 30 to 40 with older adults who had normal blood pressure.

The researchers found that the high blood pressure group had significantly lower regional brain volumes and worse white matter integrity. Both factors are associated with dementia.

The research also showed that the negative brain changes in some regions—such as decreased grey matter volume and frontal cortex volume—were stronger in men. They note the differences may be related to the protective benefits of estrogen before menopause.

“Treatment for dementia is extremely limited, so identifying modifiable risk and protective factors over the life course is key to reducing disease burden,” says Kristen M. George, an assistant professor in the public health sciences department at the University of California, Davis and first author of the study in JAMA Network Open.

“High blood pressure is an incredibly common and treatable risk factor associated with dementia. This study indicates hypertension status in early adulthood is important for brain health decades later,” George says.

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is blood pressure that is higher than normal. A normal blood pressure level is less than 130/80 mmHg. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 47% of adults in the United States have hypertension.

The rate of hypertension varies by sex and race. About 50% of men have high blood pressure compared to 44% of women. The rate of hypertension is about 56% in Black adults, 48% in white adults, 46% in Asian adults, and 39% in Hispanic adults. African Americans ages 35-64 years are 50% more likely to have high blood pressure than whites.

For the study, researchers looked at data from 427 participants from the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE) study and the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans (STAR). This provided them with health data from 1964 to 1985 for a diverse cohort of older Asian, Black, Latino, and white adults.

They obtained two blood pressure readings from when the participants were between the ages of 30 to 40. This allowed them to determine if they had been hypertensive, transitioning to hypertensive, or had normal blood pressure in young adulthood.

Read the full article about high blood pressure by Lisa Howard at Futurity.