Millions of Adults Off Hypertension Medication

As many as 5.8 million US adults could no longer be in need of hypertension medication after new guidelines relaxed previous recommendations, according to a new analysis.

The report, conducted by researchers at Duke Medicine, is the first to study the impact of the February-released guideline from the Eight Join National Committee. 
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These guidelines called for relaxed blood pressure goals in adults over 60 years old to 150/90, rather than 140/90, and also decreased goals for adults with diabetes and kidney disease.

In a collaborative effort with McGill University, researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute studied data from 2005 to 2010 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted by the CDC, including over 16,000 participants.

They determined that the proportion of adults eligible for hypertension drugs would fall from 40.6% to only 31.7%, while 13.5 million adults over 60 would no longer be in a “danger zone” for poorly controlled blood pressure—they would now be considered “adequately managed.”

“This study reinforces how many Americans with hypertension fall into the treatment ‘gray zone’ where we don’t know how aggressive to treat and where we urgently need to conduct more research” concluded Eric D. Peterson, M.D., director of DCRI.

by Michael Potts

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References:

Navar-Boggan AM, Pencina MJ, Williams K, Sniderman A, Peterson ED. Proportion of US Adults Potentially Affected by the 2014 Hypertension Guideline. JAMA. Published online March 29, 2014. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.2531

James PA, Oparil S, Carter BL, Cushman WC, et al. 2014 Evidence-Based Guideline for the Management of High Blood Pressure in Adults. JAMA. 2014;311(5):507-520. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.284427.