Fight Aging!

In recent years the research and medical communities have lowered the recommended targets for blood pressure control via antihypertensive therapies. Evidence strongly suggests that the chronic raised blood pressure that accompanies aging is one of the more influential downstream consequences of molecular damage and cellular dysfunction that stiffens arteries. Hypertension accelerates the progression of atherosclerosis, damages sensitive tissues of the brain, kidney, and other organs, and promotes detrimental remodeling of the heart. It is a mechanism by which low-level cellular dysfunction is converted into structural damage and systems failure throughout the body. As noted here, controlling blood pressure results in some degree of reduced mortality and raised life expectancy even in the absence of any attempt to address the underlying damage of aging that caused it.

When data from the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) were published in 2015, the medical community responded enthusiastically to the news that reducing blood pressure lower than the normal targets could reduce overall death rates by 27 percent for adults at high cardiovascular risk. Investigators now describe how aggressively lowering blood pressure levels can extend a person's life expectancy. They report that having a blood pressure target of less than 120 mm Hg - rather than the standard 140 mm Hg - can add six months to three years to a person's lifetime, depending upon how old they are when they begin intensive blood pressure control.

By applying age-based methods to the data from SPRINT, the team could estimate the long-term benefits of intensive blood pressure control. The SPRINT study enrolled more than 9,000 adults who were 50 years or older, were at high cardiovascular risk but did not have diabetes, and had a systolic blood pressure between 130- and 180-mm Hg (130 mm Hg or higher is considered high blood pressure). Participants were randomized to intensive (at least 120 mm Hg) or standard (at least 140 mm Hg) systolic blood pressure targets. Participants were given antihypertensive therapies, free of cost, to achieve their blood pressure targets and were followed for an average of a little over three years.

Researchers estimated that if people had continued taking their antihypertensive therapies for the remainder of their lives, those with the intensive blood pressure target could add six months to three years to their life expectancy, compared to those with the standard blood pressure target. This span depended upon the person's age - for someone who began antihypertensive medications at 50 years old, they predicted a difference of 2.9 years; for someone 65 years old, a difference of 1.1 years; and for someone 80 years old, a difference of nine months.

Link: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/bawh-ibp022420.php