To evaluate the joint effect of hypertension (HTN) and diabetes (DM) on coronary heart disease (CHD), and stroke event, all-cause, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality in Middle Eastern older adults, 2747 people (1436 women) aged ≥ 50 years, free of CVD at baseline, were categorized into four groups (HTN−/DM−, HTN+/DM−, HTN−/DM+, HTN+/DM+). Multivariate Cox proportional hazard models were run for different outcomes. To compare the impact of HTN versus DM, HTN+/DM− was considered as reference. In a median of 13.9 years, incidence rate of CHD, and stroke event, all-cause and CVD mortality in total population were 19.0, 4.7, 13.5, and 6.4 per 1000 person-years, respectively. The multivariate sex-adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) of HTN−/DM+ for CHD, stroke, all-cause mortality and CVD mortality were 1.19 (confidence interval (CI): 0.9–1.57), 1.07 (CI: 0.63–1.82), 1.62 (CI: 1.2–2.18), and 1.28 (CI: 0.83–1.97); the corresponding HRs for HTN+/DM+ were 1.96 (CI: 1.57–2.46), 1.66 (CI: 1.1–2.52), 2.32 (CI: 1.8–2.98), and 2.6 (CI: 1.85–3.65) respectively. The associations between HTN/DM status with stroke incidence and all-cause mortality were stronger among men than in women (P for interaction <0.05). Compared to HTN+/DM−, HTN−/DM+ increases all-cause mortality by 62%, however, they are not considerably different regarding CHD, stroke incidence and CVD mortality.

To examine the associations of different lipid measures and related indices with incident hypertension during a median follow-up of 12.89 years. Fasting levels of total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), high and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C and LDL-C, respectively), and related indices (TC/HDL-C and TG/HDL-C) were determined in 7335 Iranian adults (men=3270) free of hypertension, aged 39.0 [standard deviation (SD):13.2] years. Multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression was applied and lipid parameters were considered either as categorical or continuous variables. During follow-up, 2413 (men=11260) participants experienced hypertension. Using the first quartile as reference, significant trends were found between quartiles of TG, HDL-C, TC/HDL-C, and TG/HDL-C in multivariate models; moreover considering these measures as continuous variables, a 1 SD increase in each of these parameters was significantly associated with risk of incident hypertension; the corresponding hazard ratios and confidence intervals were 1.06(1.02-1.10), 0.94(0.89-0.98), 1.04(1.01-1.09), and 1.04(1.01-1.07), respectively. The association between lipid measures and incident hypertension did not change after excluding lipid lowering drug users and those with type 2 diabetes mellitus and were independent of the baseline categories of blood pressure (P for interaction > 0.08). To take into account the nutrition data, a re-analysis on a subgroup (n=1705), showed that a 1-SD increase in TG and TG/HDL-C were associated with incident hypertension, after adjusting for dietary cofounders [1.15(1.08–1.24) and 1.03(1.01–1.04), respectively]. These findings indicate that TG, TG/HDL-C, and TC/HDL-C were independently associated with higher risk while HDL-C was associated with lower risk of incident hypertension.