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More Efficient Blood Pressure Treatment Would Cut Heart Disease By Two-Thirds LONDON, UK -- March 10, 2000 -- If treatment for blood pressure was more efficiently targeted, cases of heart disease and stroke could be cut by more than two thirds compared with current treatment, suggests a study in this week's BMJ. Jackson and colleagues, from the University of Auckland's Department of Community Health, estimated how many people would need to be treated for raised blood pressure and how much death and disease could subsequently be avoided over the next five years. This was done by calculating the five year risk of heart disease and stroke among a representative sample of over 2,000 men and women aged between 35 and 79 and then applying the results to the region as a whole. Treatment "thresholds" were set according to predicted risk over the next five years. The results showed that the lower the risk, the greater the numbers of patients requiring treatment, but the greater the reduction in death and disease. A 10 per cent risk would mean an additional 20,000 patients treated set against a more than two thirds (68 percent) reduction in death and disease. And this would principally be among men over the age of 65, a group currently considered to be "undertreated". A 15 per cent risk threshold would cut cardiovascular disease by just over a third, boosting those needing treatment by an extra 10 per cent. Treatments to lower blood pressure would be much more effective if they were based on risk thresholds rather than current criteria, conclude the authors. E-mail this page to a friend or colleague! To print, use this version