Long-term changes in body weight are associated with changes in blood pressure levels

• We show the associations of changes in body weight with changes in blood pressure.
• A loss of 5% of weight resulted in a RR of incident hypertension of 0.84.
• A loss of 5% of weight resulted in a RR of incident cardiovascular events of 0.81.
• A loss of 5% of weight resulted in a 15% chance of normalization of blood pressure.
• Lifestyle modifications have an impact on blood pressure in the general population.

Background and aimsHypertension and obesity are highly prevalent in Western societies. We investigated the associations of changes in body weight with changes in blood pressure and with incident hypertension, incident cardiovascular events, or incident normalization of blood pressure in patients who were hypertensive at baseline, over a 5-year period.Methods and resultsData of men and women aged 20–81 years of the Study of Health in Pomerania were used. Changes in body weight were related to changes in blood pressure by linear regression (n = 1875) adjusted for cofounders. Incident hypertension, incident cardiovascular events, or incident blood pressure normalization in patients who were hypertensive at baseline were investigated using Poisson regression (n = 3280) models. A change of 1 kg in body weight was positively associated with a change of 0.45 mm Hg (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.34–0.55 mm Hg) in systolic blood pressure, 0.32 mm Hg (95% CI: 0.25–0.38 mm Hg) in diastolic blood pressure, and 0.36 mm Hg (95% CI: 0.29–0.43 mm Hg) in mean arterial pressure (all p-values <0.001). A 5% weight loss reduced the relative risk (RR) of incident hypertension (RRs 0.84 (95% CI: 0.79–0.89)) and incident cardiovascular events (RRs 0.81 (95% CI: 0.68–0.98)) and increased the chance of incident blood pressure normalization in patients who were hypertensive at baseline by 15% (95% CI: 7–23%).ConclusionsAbsolute and relative changes in body weight are positively associated with changes in blood pressure levels and also affect the risk of cardiovascular events.