A lowering of blood pressure to 130/80 or below is not the solution to check kidney damage among African Americans who generally have a higher than average high blood pressure, reported Reuters. Unless presence of protein in urine shows evidence of a kidney damage, the theory falls flat, according to a study report.

Earlier, doctors had hoped to show that dropping blood pressures would significantly lower rates of kidney problems for African-Americans. But the latest findings by a long-running study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that aggressive blood pressure control did little more than standard blood pressure treatment geared toward getting the number down to 140/90. Only when protein traces were found in urine, the progression of kidney disease was reduced by about 25 percent by lowering the blood pressure, according to the team led by Dr. Lawrence Appel of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

In the United Sates, about $49 billion is spent every year on treating chronic kidney disease and another $23 billion caring for those with kidney failure. Roughly one third of those cases are caused by high blood pressure.

Medicine