Effect of Hypertension Duration on the Associations Between Intensive Blood Pressure Control and

Journal of the American Heart Association, Volume 15, Issue 6 , March 17, 2026. BackgroundIntensive systolic blood pressure (SBP) treatment could mitigate the increased cardiovascular disease risk associated with long‐standing hypertension.

Target organ damage serves as a critical intermediate phenotype in hypertension‐related sequelae. However, the associations of hypertension duration on the cardiac, vascular, and kidney organ damage improvement of intensive SBP treatment remains to be elucidated.MethodsA total of 8442 STEP (Strategy of Blood Pressure Intervention in the Elderly Hypertensive Patients) participants with complete hypertension duration data were categorized by hypertension duration ≤5 years, 5~10 years, 10~15 years, and >15 years.

Patients were randomly assigned to intensive or standard SBP treatment groups after enrollment. Odds ratios (ORs) for left ventricular hypertrophy, arterial stiffness, and chronic kidney disease were calculated using a logistic regression model, testing for effect modification by hypertension duration.ResultsFor left ventricular hypertrophy, no evidence showed heterogeneity among groups with different hypertension duration in the treatment effect between intensive versus standard treatment for either new‐onset or improvement (bothPfor interaction >0.05).