How blood pressure and heart rate recovery after everyday stresses relate to vascular health and early brain aging
Official title: Epidemiology of blood pressure responses to perturbations: Correlates and prognosis for vascular risk, end-organ damage, cognitive aging and preclinical Alzheimer's disease
Funded at University of Texas Hlth Science Center · NIH-11323940 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This work looks at whether how your blood pressure and heart rate bounce back after everyday stresses can signal higher risk for heart disease, organ damage, memory decline, or early Alzheimer's.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | University of Texas Hlth Science Center NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (San Antonio, United States) |
| Project start | June 1, 2022 |
| Project end | February 28, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2026 |
| Award (this year) | $600,973 |
| NIH project number | 5R01AG075703-05 |
| Project ID | NIH-11323940 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Adults (typically middle‑aged and older) with or without cardiovascular disease who can attend clinic visits for blood pressure/heart rate testing, imaging, and cognitive testing are ideal candidates.
✕Less likely to help
Children, people with advanced dementia who cannot complete tests, or those unable to attend in‑person monitoring and imaging visits are unlikely to benefit from participation.
What this research studies
You would have your blood pressure and heart rate recorded beat‑to‑beat while doing short tasks that change your position, make you exercise, or give you mental challenges. Researchers will build detailed response‑and‑recovery curves from those recordings to create dynamic indicators of hemodynamic resilience. Those indicators will be compared with your medical history, measures of artery stiffness and atherosclerosis, brain imaging, and cognitive tests to see links with brain aging and early signs of Alzheimer’s. The team will also look at family patterns and past risk factor trajectories to understand who shows reduced resilience.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this could identify early, noninvasive signals of brain aging and cardiovascular risk that help target prevention before major symptoms appear.
How similar studies have gone: Prior studies link blood pressure and heart rate variability to outcomes, but using high‑dimensional response‑recovery curves as proposed is a newer approach with limited prior validation.
Where this research is happening
-
University of Texas Hlth Science Center
San Antonio, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Ramachandran, Vasan — University of Texas Hlth Science Center
- Study coordinator: Ramachandran, Vasan
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.