Body weight and blood pressure Effects of weight reduction on hypertension

A substudy of the Hypertension Optimal Treatment study, conducted in the Jackson Mississippi Center, set out to determine the link between obesity and hypertension and to determine the effects of weight loss in hypertensive individuals. An analysis of the relationship between body mass index and diastolic blood pressure for another study showed that increasing body mass indices were associated with increases in blood pressure. This indicates that not only is there a strong relationship between obesity and hypertension, but that there is also a close association between the continuous variables of body mass index and blood pressure. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effectiveness of a weight loss regimen in reducing the amount of medication required to achieve the target blood pressure in 228 patients at the Jackson center. Subjects were randomized to a dietary intervention group or to a control group. Preliminary 3 month observational data showed that subjects who lost the appropriate amount of weight were three times more likely to achieve their target blood pressure at 3 months. These observations suggest that weight reduction regimens can reduce elevated blood pressure and can probably promote further blood pressure reductions when combined with drug therapy in the treatment of hypertension.