Abstract

Should diabetic blood pressure targets be the same in elderly compared with younger patients?

Author(s): Claudio Borghi & Alessandra Pavesi

The association between hypertension and diabetes mellitus increases the risk of major cardiovascular and renal complications. The guidelines on hypertension recommend a specific blood pressure (BP) target for diabetic patients as a preventive strategy that favorably affects the burden of cardiovascular diseases in patients with hypertension and diabetes. The prevalence of the association between hypertension and diabetes mellitus increases with age. At present, it is still unclear what should be the optimal BP target for the elderly with diabetes mellitus. In this review we have considered the literature available to date and the particular characteristics of the elderly population. We propose that the BP target for the oldest old should be higher compared with the BP target for younger people.