Tight Control of Blood Pressure Offers No Extra Advantage

High blood pressure is an important risk factor for cardiovascular complications such as heart attack and stroke, not to mention kidney disease. People with diabetes are especially prone to these problems, so it’s no wonder that physicians often treat hypertension aggressively in these patients. The idea that keeping blood pressure under strict control would offer better results seems to make sense. But a new study shows it doesn’t work.
In this research, 6,400 people with diabetes and coronary artery disease were followed for approximately 8 years. There was quite an important difference in outcomes between the group with usual control of blood pressure and those who could not get their blood pressure under control. Nearly 20 percent of the uncontrolled group experienced a serious event such as stroke, heart attack or death. In contrast, only 12.6 percent of those with usual blood pressure control and 12.7 percent of those with tight blood pressure control had such a harmful result. Obviously, controlling blood pressure is important for people with diabetes, but working extra hard to get it down to normal levels doesn’t offer an additional benefit. This finding agrees with that of another large study that was reported recently, the ACCORD trial.
[Journal of the American Medical Association, July 7, 2010]