DALLAS: Patients who reduce their blood pressure well below the recommended level can significantly cut their risk of heart disease and death, says a major study.
Doctors have long debated how low blood-pressure patients need to go, especially as they get older, so the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored a nationwide study to test if that’s the best goal, or if aiming lower would either help or harm.
Starting in 2010 more than 9,300 high blood pressure patients were enrolled in the Sprint study, the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial.
The average age of participants was 68 and a quarter of them were over 75. Half received an average of about two medications with the goal of lowering their systolic pressure below 140. The other half received an average of three medications with the goal of getting below 120.
The more aggressively treated patients saw their risk of death drop by almost 25% compared with the less controlled patients, researchers said. And rates of cardiovascular problems dropped by almost 30% in the better-controlled group.
The benefit was strong enough that the NIH stopped the study a year early.