Millions of Americans would benefit from blood pressure-lowering medications, research out today shows\u2014yet plenty are going untreated.<\/p>\n
An international team of researchers examined nationally representative survey data of Americans. Based on recently updated guidelines from the American Heart Association (AHA), roughly 22 million adults in the U.S. are eligible for drugs that lower blood pressure, but nearly half aren\u2019t taking them, the researchers found. Greater use of these drugs could prevent up to 200,000 deaths over the next decade, they further calculated.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current study has potential implications for both clinical practice and public health,\u201d the researchers wrote in their paper, published<\/a> Tuesday in the Journal of the American Heart Association.<\/p>\n New guidelines <\/p>\n Last year, the AHA, in conjunction with the American College of Cardiology and others, updated<\/a> its guidelines for managing high blood pressure, also called hypertension.<\/p>\n One important change was the recommendation that doctors now use a recently developed criterion<\/a> to predict the 10-year and 30-year risk of cardiovascular disease in people between the ages of 30 and 79 without any known cardiovascular disease. This criterion, called PREVENT (Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs), is intended to account for cardiovascular factors that have historically been underappreciated, such as kidney and metabolic health.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The research team aimed to see how the new guidelines and the PREVENT criteria might shape the treatment of high blood pressure moving forward. To do so, they analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a nationally representative poll of Americans\u2019 dieting and lifestyle habits regularly run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Specifically, they looked at NHANES data from 2009 to 2018.<\/p>\n Based on the NHANES data, about 81 million U.S. adults have been diagnosed with high blood pressure as of late. According to the updated guidelines, around 23 million were newly eligible for hypertension drugs. Of these, 13 million were already receiving some sort of medication, while 9.7 million (43%) weren\u2019t on any treatment.<\/p>\n The benefits of added therapy <\/p>\n Though hypertension alone doesn\u2019t guarantee that someone will experience a heart attack or other cardiovascular problem, it is a major risk factor, especially if it remains untreated. The researchers relied on the PREVENT criteria to estimate the benefits of expanded treatment.<\/p>\n Compared to untreated adults with hypertension, they found, people on these drugs had a 23% lower risk of dying from any cause and a 50% lower risk of dying from heart-related problems. What\u2019s more, if every eligible person went on blood pressure-lowering drugs, roughly 200,000 deaths from any cause and 162,000 cardiovascular deaths might be prevented in the U.S. over the following decade.<\/p>\n The researchers don\u2019t want to discount the importance of lifestyle changes for managing high blood pressure, such as exercise and less sodium in people\u2019s diets. But it\u2019s clear that many Americans who would benefit from these drugs aren\u2019t getting them, they say, and that this disparity is likely to lead to many preventable deaths.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat stood out most was the size of the treatment gap\u2014more than 40% of people who were clearly eligible under the new guideline were not receiving treatment, as well as the scale of the potential benefit,\u201d said lead author Mustafa Al-Jarshawi, a scientist at the Cardiovascular Research Group at the Center for Prognosis Research at Keele University in the UK, in a statement<\/a> released by the AHA.<\/p>\n So, yes, if you\u2019ve ever been worried about your blood pressure, it might be time to schedule a visit with your primary care doctor and decide together how best to take care of your long-term heart and cardiovascular health.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Millions of Americans would benefit from blood pressure-lowering medications, research out today shows\u2014yet plenty are going untreated. 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