SPRINT (Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial) study pubished two day back in NEJM concludes that among patients at high risk for cardiovascular events but without diabetes, targeting a systolic blood pressure of <120 mm Hg versus <140 mm Hg, resulted in lower rates of fatal and nonfatal major cardiovascular events and death from any cause. At 1 year in randomly assigned 9361 patients, the mean systolic blood pressure was 121.4 mm Hg in the intensive-treatment group and 136.2 mm Hg in the standard-treatment group. The intervention was stopped early after a median follow-up of 3.26 years owing to a significantly lower rate of the primary composite outcome in the intensive-treatment group than in the standard-treatment group (1.65% vs.
2.19% per year). An important point to be noted here is that rates of serious adverse events of hypotension, syncope, electrolyte abnormalities, and…
