Chronically raised blood pressure, or hypertension, is highly damaging to tissues throughout the body. It is an important mechanism linking the molecular damage of aging to gross structural damage to organs, causing loss of function, age-related disease, and death. Many of the underlying causes of aging lead to stiffness of blood vessel walls, from cross-linking in the extracellular matrix to the effects of senescent cell signaling on vascular smooth muscle cells. That stiffness causes dysfunction in the regulation of blood pressure, which in turn causes pressure damage, increased pace of the development of atherosclerosis, and other age-related issues.
Taking blood pressure medication as prescribed helped even the frailest elderly people (65 and older) live longer, and the healthiest older people had the biggest survival boost, according to a large study in northern Italy. Researchers reviewed data on almost 1.3 million people aged 65 and older (average age 76) in the Lombardy region of northern Italy who had three or more high blood pressure medication prescriptions in 2011-2012. Examining the public health care database, researchers calculated the percentage of time over the next seven years (or until death) that each person continued to receive the medications. Because almost all medications are free or low-cost and dispensed by the public health service, this corresponds roughly to people’s adherence in using the medication in Italy.
Researchers compared roughly 255,000 people who died during the 7-year follow-up with age-, gender-, and health-status-matched controls who survived and divided them into four groups of health status: good, medium, poor, or very poor. The probability of death over 7-years was 16% for people rated in good health at the beginning of the study. Mortality probability increased progressively to 64% for those rated in very poor health.
Compared with people with very low adherence to blood pressure medications, meaning dispensed pills covered less than 25% of the time period, people with high adherence to blood pressure medications, meaning more than 75% of the time period covered, were: (a) 44% less likely to die if they started in good health; and (b) 33% less likely to die if they started in very poor health. A similar pattern was seen with cardiovascular deaths. The greatest survival benefit was among the people who started in good health, and the most modest survival benefit was in those who started in very poor health. “Our findings definitely suggest that even in very frail people, antihypertensive treatment reduces the risk of death; however, the benefits may be smaller in this group.”