ABSTRACT
None the less, the presence of hypertension poses an additional risk for cardiovascular damage at all ages. Perhaps the clearest portrayal of the progressive increase
in both heart attack and stroke with increasing blood pressure is the analysis of MacMahon et al. (1990) (Figure 10). Their curves are constructed using data from multiple prospective observational studies in which over 450 000 subjects were followed without therapy for variable periods. These relative risk relationships are for diastolic blood pressure but, as we shall see, the degrees of risk are even steeper for systolic blood pressure.
