Really?
From the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
Not a whole lot of effect on anything?
Ref:
http://www.medicinenet.com/script/m...rticlekey=23356[/QUOTE]
It may well be true that people with hypertension have a somewhat higher risk of CHD. But is it a CAUSE or an effect?
And if you lower the BP, does it lower the risk of developing CHD?
Not so far:
"No randomized clinical trials have ever proven that lowering an elevated systolic blood pressure to 140 reduces the risk for death due to coronary disease. A good example of this was the multicenter Multiple Risk Factor Trial (MRFIT) designed to demonstrate that reducing hypertension, high cholesterol and smoking would lower coronary mortality. After screening some 350,000 middle-aged men, close to 13,000 believed to be at greater jeopardy because of a preponderance of these putative risk factors were selected. They were divided into a treatment group to lower these markers and a control group that received usual care.
After ten years and $115 million, although the treatment group substantially achieved their objectives, they fared no different than controls who received usual care. In point of fact, a subset of hypertensives treated with diuretics had the highest mortality rates, probably from ventricular fibrillation due to potassium depletion. The MRFIT objective was to get blood pressures below 140/90. One can only wonder what the mortality rate would have been if under 120/80 had been the goal."
European Heart Journal, issue 20, October 2000:
‘It is widely believed that randomised trials have proved that lowering blood pressure is beneficial. Actually, that is not true. All antihypertensive drugs have profound effects on the cardiovascular system, aside from their haemodynamic (blood pressure lowering) effect. How much, if any, of the observed risk reduction can be ascribed to the reduction in pressure and how much to the direct action of the drug on the cardiovascular system? Motivated by the belief in the linear relationship of risk to pressure, many automatically attribute the risk reduction to the pressure reduction, ignoring the direct action of the drugs on the target outcomes. But results of a multitude of clinical trials make it clear that such a simplistic view cannot be true. In fact, evidence is mounting (especially from the newer trials) that it is the direct effects that are producing most, if not all, or the benefit and that the accompanying blood pressure reduction may be just an inconsequential side effect.’ Port S et al.