Heart diseases, hypertension and effects of antihypertensive medications: Is hypertension a true risk factor of heart diseases?

BACKGROUND: Heart diseases (HD) are the leading cause of deaths in the world. Many studies have been done on the relationships among hypertension, HD and antihypertensive medications. Most of the studies find that hypertension is a significant risk factor of HD, but there are some studies in which hypertension is not a risk factor. As antihypertensive medications are routinely prescribed to prevent HD, it is necessary to evaluate the effects of these and other risk factors of HD. DATA AND METHODS: The relationship between hypertension and HD was analyzed using 6,773,464 medical checkups obtained from the JMDC Claims Database obtained from January 2005 to September 2019. Factors potentially affecting HD, including blood pressures (BP) and usage of antihypertensive medications, were evaluated using 2,861,769 observations. To avoid the causality problem, probit models were used to analyze the probability of an individual who had no history of HD at year t developing HD by year t + 1. RESULTS: A positive relation between systolic blood pressure (SBP) and HD was found in the equation without any other covariates. However, the significant relation between HD and BP disappeared when the models contained various other factors as covariates. When a 10-year age or longer interval was used in the model, a positive relation between the two variables was found, suggesting that SBP works as a proxy variable. Taking antihypertensive medications greatly increases the probability of developing HD in the next year. Higher levels of cholesterols decrease the probability of developing HD. CONCLUSION: Unlike many previous studies, no significant relationship between HD and hypertension was found in the models containing multiple covariates. The accepted relation might actually be spurious, and it is important to select covariates carefully. Taking antihypertensive medications appears to increase the probability of developing HD in the next year, suggesting the need for further research and greater caution in the use of antihypertensive medications.