A new mouse-model study, conducted by researchers from Fujita Health University, found the specific body systems involved in hypertension and cognitive impairment caused by high salt consumption.
In their study, scientists gave the mice high-salt drinking water for 12 weeks and monitored their blood pressure. They also observed the effects of high salt consumption on their emotional and cognitive function and tau phosphorylation in the brain’s prefrontal cortex and hippocampus areas.
Dr. Sandra Narayanan, a board-certified vascular neurologist and neuro-interventional surgeon at Pacific Neuroscience Institute in Santa Monica, California, explains: “In this animal model, it was interesting to note how adverse biochemical changes from a high sodium intake (and) hyperphosphorylation of the protein tau that is associated with cognitive impairment and neuronal loss and Alzheimer’s and other dementias was associated with shortened length of brain cells, or dendritic length, particularly in brain regions that are involved in memory, such as the hippocampi.”