OBJECTIVES: Chronic inflammation has been implicated in the development of hypertension in numerous previous studies. However, evidence regarding the association between hematological inflammatory indices derived from complete blood count tests and the long-term risk of hypertension remains limited. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between various hematological inflammatory indices and the risk of incident hypertension in a large cohort study. METHODS: We analyzed data from a large Korean cohort (n = 128,241). The incident risk of hypertension was evaluated according to quartiles of the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), monocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), and systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI) using Cox proportional hazards models. Additional analyses were conducted for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) levels and stratified by sex.RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 6.8 years, 18,686 participants (14.5%) developed hypertension. Higher quartiles of SII, SIRI, and NLR were significantly associated with an increased risk of incident hypertension in both sexes. PLR showed a clearer positive association in women, whereas MLR demonstrated only marginal associations. These patterns were consistent with the associations observed for hsCRP. CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that elevated hematological inflammatory indices above certain thresholds are associated with an increased risk of hypertension, even among young and generally healthy individuals.
Jung et al. (Wed,) studied this question.