==== Front
Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.2827
igaa057.2827
Abstracts
Session 7160 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
Relationship of Indicators of Cardiovascular Health With Change in Cognition in Older Blacks
Lamar Melissa 1 Fleischman Debra 2 Leurgans Sue 2 Arfanakis Konstantinos 2 Barnes Lisa 1 1 
Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States
2 
Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”781 781
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Older Blacks perform more poorly on cognitive testing than older Whites. Increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease risk factors (CVD-RFs) among Blacks compared to Whites contribute to these disparities. We investigated whether white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) in late-life, a consequence of mid-life CVD-RFs, modify the association between late-life CVD-RFs and cognition in 167 Blacks (age~75yrs; non-demented at baseline). Participants were evaluated for blood pressure (BP) markers of cardiovascular health (systolic/diastolic BP, pulse pressure, mean arterial pressure (MAP) hypertension), WMH volumes adjusted for intracranial volume, and cognition (global and domain-specific at baseline and annually, ~8yrs). Adjusted models revealed differential associations between BP markers and baseline cognition; diastolic BP and MAP predicted faster decline in episodic memory. Hypertension was not significant in any model; however, when adding WMH, the hypertension*WMH interaction was significant for baseline cognition. Cognition among older Blacks is a complex function of BP markers of cardiovascular health and WMH.