Blood pressure and age-related GFR decline in the general population

Background Hypertension is one of the most important causes of end-stage renal disease, but it is unclear whether elevated blood pressure (BP) also accelerates the gradual decline in the glomerular filtration rate (GFR) seen in the general population with increasing age. The reason may be that most studies have considered only baseline BP and not the effects of changes in BP, antihypertensive treatment and other determinants of GFR during follow-up. Additionally, the use of GFR estimated from creatinine or cystatin C instead of measurements of GFR may have biased the results because of influence from non-GFR related confounders. We studied the relationship between BP and GFR decline using time-varying variables in a cohort representative of the general population using measurements of GFR as iohexol clearance.