Preventive Blood Pressure is Associated with Reduced Risk of Death
Primary preventive blood pressure (BP) lowering is associated with reduced risk of death and cardiovascular disease (CVD) if the baseline systolic blood pressure (SBP) is 140 mm Hg or higher, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine . High BP is the most important risk factor for mortality and CVD worldwide. Existing guidelines recommend treating high BP to a SBP goal below 140 mm Hg. “We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis to estimate the treatment effect of BP lowering on death and CVD across SBP levels,” wrote the authors of the study. “We aimed to achieve a more comprehensive study inclusion than previous meta-analyses, and we used nonstandardized methods, with risk ratios and SEs derived from raw data.” The authors included trials with at least 1000 patient-years of follow-up that compared drugs with placebo or different BP targets against each other. Previous systematic reviews were assessed from PubMed, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Revi