[Comparison of initiation of antihypertensive therapy strategies for primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases in Chinese population: A decision-analytic Markov modelling study].

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the health benefits and intervention efficiency of different strategies of initiating antihypertensive therapy for the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases in a community-based Chinese population from the Chinese electronic health records research in Yinzhou (CHERRY) study.

METHODS

A decision-analytic Markov model was used to simulate and compare different antihypertensive initiation strategies, including: Strategy 1, initiation of antihypertensive therapy for Chinese adults with systolic blood pressure (SBP) ≥140 mmHg (); Strategy 2, initiation of antihypertensive therapy for Chinese adults with SBP ≥130 mmHg; Strategy 3, initiation of antihypertensive therapy for Chinese adults with SBP≥140 mmHg, or with SBP between 130 and 140 mmHg and at high risk of cardiovascular diseases (/, , , ); Strategy 4, initiation of antihypertensive therapy for Chinese adults with SBP≥160 mmHg, or with SBP between 140 and 160 mmHg and at high risk of cardiovascular diseases (: ). The high 10-year cardiovascular risk was defined as the predicted risk over 10% based on the 2019 World Health Organization cardiovascular disease risk charts. Different strategies were simulated by the Markov model for ten years (cycles), with parameters mainly from the CHERRY study or published literature. After ten cycles of simulation, the numbers of quality-adjusted life years (QALY), cardiovascular events and all-cause deaths were calculated to evaluate the health benefits of each strategy, and the numbers needed to treat (NNT) for each cardiovascular event or all-cause death could be prevented were calculated to assess the intervention efficiency. One-way sensitivity analysis on the uncertainty of incidence rates of cardiovascular disease and probabilistic sensitivity analysis on the uncertainty of hazard ratios of interventions were conducted.

RESULTS

A total of 213 987 Chinese adults aged 35-79 years without cardiovascular diseases were included. Compared with strategy 1, the number of cardiovascular events that could be prevented in strategy 2 increased by 666 (95% : 334-975), while the NNT per cardiovascular event prevented increased by 10 (95% : 7-20). In contrast to strategy 1, the number of cardiovascular events that could be prevented in strategy 3 increased by 388 (95% : 194-569), and the NNT per cardiovascular event prevented decreased by 6 (95% : 4-12), suggesting that strategy 3 had better health benefits and intervention efficiency. Compared to strategy 1, although the number of cardiovascular events that could be prevented decreased by 193 (95% : 98-281) in strategy 4, the NNT per cardiovascular event prevented decreased by 18 (95% : 13-37) with better efficiency. The results were consistent in the sensitivity analyses.

CONCLUSION

When initiating antihypertensive therapy in an economically developed area of China, the strategy combined with cardiovascular risk assessment is more efficient than those purely based on the SBP threshold. The cardiovascular risk assessment strategy with different SBP thresholds is suggested to balance health benefits and intervention efficiency in diverse populations.