Short-Term and Long-Term Blood Pressure Changes and the Risk of All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality

Few studies compared the effects of BP changes in short- and long-terms on all-cause mortality and CVD mortality.

We performed a 12.5-year follow-up study to examine the association between short- (2008 to 2010) and long-term [baseline (2004-2006) to 2010] BP changes and the risk of mortality (2010 to 2017) in the Fuxin prospective cohort study. The Cox proportional hazards model was used for this study, and the average BP was stratified according to the Seven Joint National Committee (JNC7).

We identified 1496 (805 CVD deaths) and 2138 deaths (1222 CVD deaths) in short- and long-term study. Compared with BP maintainer, in short-term BP changes, for participants from normotension or prehypertension to hypertension, the hazards ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of all-cause mortality were 1.948 (1.118-3.392) and 1.439 (1.218-1.700), respectively, while for participants from hypertension to prehypertension, the HRs (95% CIs) were 0.766 (0.638-0.899) for all-cause mortality and 0.729 (0.585-0.908) for CVD mortality, respectively. In long-term BP changes, for participants from normotension or prehypertension to hypertension, the HRs (95% CIs) of all-cause mortality were 1.738 (1.099-2.749) and 1.203 (1.023-1.414), and they were 2.351 (1.049-5.269) and 1.323 (1.047-1.672) for CVD mortality, respectively. In addition, the effects of short-term BP changes on all-cause and CVD mortality, measured as regression coefficients (β), were significantly greater than those in long-term change (all P<0.05).

Our study emphasizes that short-term changes in BP have a greater impact on all-cause and CVD mortality than long-term changes and assess the cut-off value of the changes in blood pressure elevation.