Blood pressure trajectories prior to death in patients with diabetes

The goals of this study were to examine trajectories of blood pressure (BP) in adults with diabetes and investigate the association of trajectory patterns with mortality.

A nonconcurrent longitudinal design was used to monitor 3,766 Medicare patients with diabetes from 2005 through 2008. Data were extracted from a registry of Medicare beneficiaries, which was developed by a large academic practice that participated in the Physician Group Practice Medicare Demonstration. The relationship between BP trajectories and all-cause mortality was modeled using multilevel mixed-effects linear regression.

During the 4-year study period, 10.7% of the patients died, half of whom were aged≥75 years. The crude and adjusted models both showed a greater decline in systolic and diastolic BP in patients who died than in those who did not die. In a model adjusted for age, sex, race, medications, and comorbidities, the mean systolic BP decreased by 3.2 mmHg/year (P<0.001) in the years before death and by 0.7 mmHg/year (P<0.001) in those who did not die (P<0.001 for the difference in slopes). Similarly, diastolic BP declined by 1.3 mmHg/year for those who died (P<0.001) and by 0.6 mmHg/year for those who did not die (P<0.001); the difference in slopes was significant (P=0.021).

Systolic and diastolic BP both declined more rapidly in the 4 years before death than in patients who remained alive.