A new study indicates an independent and causal association between elevated blood pressure and risk of pneumonia. The findings were published in the journal Med.
Using data from the UK Biobank, researchers estimated the epidemiologic association of hypertension with pneumonia risk and pulmonary function, and applied Mendelian randomization to determine whether blood pressure causally influenced risks for pneumonia and reduced pulmonary function.
The findings showed an independent association between prevalent hypertension and incident pneumonia (HR, 1.36; P<.001). The risk of incident pneumonia increased with a genetic predisposition to 5 mmHg increase in systolic blood pressure (HR, 1.08; P<.001) and diastolic blood pressure (HR, 1.11; P=.005). Furthermore, genetic risk for elevated blood pressure was associated with reduced performance on pulmonary function tests (P<.001).
"Blood pressure optimization is anticipated to reduce pneumonia risk in the population orthogonal to other strategies aimed at reducing infection risk," the authors said. They caution that since the analyses were performed before the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not known whether the current findings extend to COVID-19.
Zekavat SM, Honigberg M, Pirruccello JP, Kohli P, Karlson EW, Newton-Cheh C, Zhao H, Natarajan P. Elevated Blood Pressure Increases Pneumonia Risk: Epidemiological Association and Mendelian Randomization in the UK Biobank. Med (N Y). 2020 Nov 30 [Epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1016/j.medj.2020.11.001. PMID: 33283203. View full text
This article originally appeared on Univadis, part of the Medscape Professional Network.
