What is the relationship between renal function and visit-to-visit blood pressure variability in primary care? Retrospective cohort study from routinely collected healthcare data.

Objective: To determine the relationship between renal function and visit-to-visit blood pressure (BP) variability in a cohort of primary care patients.

Design: Retrospective cohort study from routinely collected healthcare data.

Setting: Primary care in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, from 2007 to 2012.

Participants: 19 175 patients who had a measure of renal function, and 7 separate visits with BP readings in the primary care record.

Outcome Measures: Visit-to-visit variability in systolic BP, calculated from the first 7 office measurements, including SD, successive variation, absolute real variation and metrics of variability shown to be independent of mean. Multiple linear regression was used to analyse the influence of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) on BP variability measures with adjustment for age, sex, diabetes, mean BP, proteinuria, cardiovascular disease, time interval between measures and antihypertensive use.

Results: In the patient cohort, 57% were women, mean (SD) age was 65.5 (12.3) years, mean (SD) eGFR was 75.6 (18.0) mL/min/1.73m(2) and SD systolic BP 148.3 (21.4) mm Hg. All BP variability measures were negatively correlated with eGFR and positively correlated with age. However, multiple linear regressions demonstrated consistent, small magnitude negative relationships between eGFR and all measures of BP variability adjusting for confounding variables.

Conclusions: Worsening renal function is associated with small increases in measures of visit-to-visit BP variability after adjustment for confounding factors. This is seen across the spectrum of renal function in the population, and provides a mechanism whereby chronic kidney disease may raise the risk of cardiovascular events.