Attributable risk fraction of prehypertension on cardiovascular disease mortality in the Japanese population: the Ohsaki Study.
BACKGROUND
Although relative risk of prehypertension (pre-HT) on cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality is modest, prevalence of pre-HT is large, that is, population attributable fraction (PAF) of pre-HT on CVD mortality might be large. However, no studies have reported the fraction.


METHODS
We followed 12,928 Japanese National Health Insurance (NHI) beneficiaries aged 40-79 years without a history of CVD. On the basis of their blood pressure (BP), the participants were categorized as normal BP, pre-HT, and hypertension (HT) (Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee criteria). Multivariate-adjusted Cox proportional hazards model was used to estimate the hazard ratio (HR) of the BP status vs. CVD mortality.


RESULTS
During 12-years of follow-up, 321 participants died of CVD. As positive relation between BP category and CVD mortality was steeper in middle-aged (40-64 years) than that in elderly (65-79 years), we separately calculated PAF on CVD mortality among middle-aged and elderly. HR (95% confidence interval) for cardiovascular mortality for pre-HT and HT, respectively, was 1.31 (0.59-2.94) and 2.98 (1.39-6.41) in middle-aged, and 1.03 (0.62-1.70) and 1.65 (1.02-2.64) in elderly. Non-normal BP, i.e., pre-HT and HT, accounted for 47 and 26% of the CVD deaths among the middle-aged and elderly participants, respectively. Although the PAF of pre-HT was larger in the middle-aged participants (7%) than that in the elderly ones (0%), neither fraction was considered large.


CONCLUSIONS
The PAF on CVD mortality in pre-HT was not large compared with that in HT.
Hozawa
Atsushi
A
Division of Epidemiology, Department of Public Health and Forensic Medicine, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. hozawa-thk@umin.ac.jp
Kuriyama
Shinichi
S
Kakizaki
Masako
M
Ohmori-Matsuda
Kaori
K
Ohkubo
Takayoshi
T
Tsuji
Ichiro
I
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology; D002318:Cardiovascular Diseases / Q000209:etiology / Q000401:mortality*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000150:complications / Q000453:epidemiology*; D007564:Japan / Q000453:epidemiology; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D018570:Risk Assessment