Because treatment of nonhypertensive individuals might postpone hypertension onset, using risk stratification to identify individuals at risk of developing hypertension might be helpful in preventing hypertension. Based on this rationale, the investigators of the Framingham Heart Study designed a new risk score that takes into account age, sex, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, body mass index, cigarette smoking, as well as parental hypertension (both parents of 1,717 participants had to be participants in the original Framingham cohort). During the average follow-up of 3.8 years, 796 individuals eventually developed new-onset hypertension. The sensitivity and specificity of the risk score was evaluated with a c-statistic of 0.788 and the model showed good calibration. The authors suggested that this risk score may facilitate the targeting of efforts in order to better predict and prevent hypertension, especially in pre-hypertensive patients. As pointed out by the authors, this risk score will have to be validated in other populations of various ethnicities and diabetes status.
Documentation centre