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Association of pulse pressure with all-cause and cause-specific mortality

Abstract

Brachial pulse pressure (PP) was used as a measure of arterial stiffness, and we investigated whether PP was associated with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in a rural Chinese population. A total of 13,223 participants were enrolled in the Rural Chinese Cohort Study during 2007–2008 and followed up in 2013–2014. Data were collected by questionnaire interview, anthropometric, and laboratory measurements. A multivariate Cox proportional-hazard model was used to estimate the hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of PP (increased by 1 standard deviation) for all-cause and cause-specific mortality. Subgroup analyses were conducted by sex and age. During a mean follow-up of 5.96 years, the all-cause mortality was 78.61/10000 person-years. The association of PP with all-cause and other causes of mortality was significant, and the adjusted HRs (95% CIs) were 1.16 (1.06−1.28), and 1.18 (1.00−1.40), respectively. On subgroup analyses, PP was positively associated with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in participants <65 years or males and positively associated with other causes of mortality in males. The risk of all-cause and other causes of mortality increased with increasing PP in a rural Chinese population. Higher PP may increase the risk of all-cause and CVD mortality for males and people <65 years as well as the risk of other causes of mortality for males in rural Chinese people.

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Fig. 1: Association of pulse pressure with all-cause, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and other causes mortality by age and sex.

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Acknowledgements

The investigators are grateful to the dedicated participants and all research staff of the study. All authors were involved in the collection of data and approval the final version of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 81373074, 81402752, and 81673260); the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (grant no. 2017A030313452).

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DL, DH and JL substantially contributed to the design and drafting of the study and the analysis and interpretation of the data. PQ, LL, YL, XS, HL, YZ, QZ, QL, CG, GT, XW, MH, RQ, SH, and MZ revising it critically for important intellectual content. DH and JL take responsibility for the integrity of the data and accuracy of the data analysis.

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Correspondence to Dongsheng Hu or Jie Lu.

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Liu, D., Qin, P., Liu, L. et al. Association of pulse pressure with all-cause and cause-specific mortality. J Hum Hypertens 35, 274–279 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-020-0333-5

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