The beneficial effect of intensive blood pressure treatment on cardiovascular and all-cause mortality does not persist, according to a study in JAMA Cardiology.

Byron C Jaeger (PhD), from the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and colleagues conducted a secondary analysis of a multicentre, randomised clinical trial involving patients aged 50 or older with hypertension and increased cardiovascular risk to examine the long-term effects of randomisation to intensive treatment.

Participants were randomly assigned to a systolic blood pressure (SBP) goal of <120mmHg (intensive treatment group; 4678 participants) vs <140mmHg (standard treatment group; 4683 participants).

The researchers found that intensive treatment was beneficial for cardiovascular and all-cause mortality (hazard ratios [95% confidence intervals], 0.66 [0.49 to 0.89] and 0.83 [0.68 to 1.01], respectively) during a median intervention period of 3.3 years.