Managing blood pressure could save your life

The study authors will continue to follow patients to see if the same aggressive blood pressure treatment also helps lower the risk of dementia and kidney disease.

About 1 in 3 adults in the US has high blood pressure, raising the risk of heart attacks, stroke, kidney failure and other health problems.

The study population was diverse, but did not include patients with diabetes, prior stroke, or polycystic kidney disease, the NIH said. Starting in 2010, more than 9,300 high blood pressure patients were enrolled in the SPRINT study, the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial.

Patients in the lower blood pressure group experienced about a 30 percent reduction in the number of strokes and heart attacks, and a 25 percent reduction in the risk of death.

“If we have a patient in our office tomorrow who fits the criteria of this trial it certainly doesn’t seem too early to begin to lower our target to 120”, says Dr. Mary Norine Walsh, medical director, heart failure and cardiac transplantation at the St. Vincent Heart Center of Indiana.

This interventionist approach is meant to stop rising blood pressure levels in their tracks.

The systolic blood pressure is the top number of the two blood pressure numbers, and it represents the pressure applied on the blood vessels after the heart contracts. The other one received medications to achieve a target of less than 120 mm Hg and received an average of three medications – this was called “the intensive treatment group”.

Groups such as the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology will likely consider the trial results when deciding whether to revise their guidelines, said cardiologist Cam Patterson, chief operating officer at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.

The study had been due to run until 2017, but because the conclusions were categorically reached, the decision was taken to release the results early as it was deemed that lives could be saved with the new information.

Note: In addition to arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) hypertension is often precipitated by high cholesterol as well as smoking cigarettes, stress, obesity, high sodium intake, and susbtance abuse (both alcohol and drugs), as well as certain medications (including contraceptives) and high water retention. They gave the subjects a mix of different medicines to reduce systolic pressure to a target of 120 instead of the commonly used 140.

I have high blood pressure.

“Then the important next step would be each patient to have that individual conversation with their physician based on their own personal risk”, she said.