Originally published August 9 2005
Small elevation of blood pressure increases risk of developing heart disease
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A new study has found that people with even slightly higher-than-normal blood pressure levels are at risk of developing heart disease.
People with blood pressure slightly above the recommended level but not high enough to be classified as having hypertension -- the medical name for high blood pressure -- are three times more likely to have a heart attack and 1.7 times more likely to have heart disease, the study found.
These people have "prehypertension," a category created about a year ago by the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure.
The study, by physicians at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, appears in the Aug. 5 issue of Stroke.
Normal blood pressure is defined as a reading lower than 120 over 80 millimeters of mercury -- the higher number when the heart contracts, the lower number when it releases.
The New Jersey researchers looked at more than 5,000 participants in the Framingham Heart Study who fell into the in-between category for a follow-up period of 10 years.
That is probably the case, said Dr. Daniel Jones, vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, and a spokesman for the American Heart Association, since the recommendation for treatment of prehypertension was based on studies showing an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.
The drug treatment that is normal for hypertension is not used in this case "with rare exceptions," such as people with diabetes or chronic kidney disease, Jones said.
"While we have known for years that the risk is present, we don't know for most people in this group whether drug therapy will reduce that risk, because drug therapy can have risks of its own," he said.
But the new findings "raise the question of whether we should treat prehypertensive patients more aggressively," Qureshi wrote.
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