Lower Blood Pressure May Preserve Kidney Function in Some Patients; African Americans With Chronic Kidney Disease Appear to Benefit From Aggressive Treatment for Hypertension.

(From AScribe)

BALTIMORE -- Intensively treating hypertension in some African Americans with kidney disease by pushing blood pressure well below the current recommended goal may significantly decrease the number who lose kidney function and require dialysis, suggests a Johns Hopkins-led study publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine Thursday.

"This is not a panacea. We have a lot more to figure out. But our evidence suggests that we have a way to at least delay or possibly even prevent end-stage kidney disease in some patients," says Lawrence J. Appel, M.D., M.P.H., a professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study's leader.

End-stage kidney disease is the point at which patients need to be on dialysis or receive a kidney transplant in order to survive.

Still, not everyone in the study was helped by …