Re-examination of some of the Framingham blood-pressure data.
Mathematical smoothing of data for the Framingham study leads to the conclusion that there is no threshold of normality for blood-pressure. A reasonable therapeutic goal might be "the lower the better". However, examination of the unsmoothed Framingham data indicates that while systolic pressures fit this no-threshold model reasonably well, changes in diastolic pressure below about 90 mm Hg have little or no prognostic significance. The poor fit of the diastolic points to the no-threshold model may also help to explain why at Framingham raised systolic pressure seemed to have a greater impact than raised diastolic pressure.
D001794:Blood Pressure; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination / Q000379:methods*; D003971:Diastole; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000401:mortality / Q000503:physiopathology; D008297:Male; D008404:Massachusetts; D008433:Mathematics; D011379:Prognosis; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013599:Systole