REVIEW Print ISSN 1738-5520 / On-line ISSN 1738-5555

DOI 10.4070/kcj.2011.41.7.349 Copyright © 2011 The Korean Society of Cardiology

Open Access

The Significance of the J-Curve in Hypertension and

Coronary Artery Diseases
Chang Gyu Park, MD, and Ju Young Lee
Cardiovascular Center, Korea University Guro Hospital, Seoul, Korea

ABSTRACT

The J-curve effect describes an inverse relation between low blood pressure (BP) and cardiovascular complications. This ef-
fect is more pronounced in patients with preexisting coronary artery disease (CAD), hypertension or left ventricular hyper-
trophy (LVH). The recent large clinical outcomes trials have observed a J-curve effect between a diastolic BP of 70-80 mmHg
as well as a systolic BP <130 mmHg. The J-curve phenomenon does not appear in stroke or renal disease. This is because the
coronary arteries are perfused during diastole, but the cerebral and renal perfusion mainly occurs in systole. Therefore, cau-
tion should be taken to maintain the diastolic blood pressure (DBP) at minimum of 70 mmHg and possibly to maintain the
DBP between 80-85 mmHg in patients with severe LVH, CAD or vascular diseases. BP control in high-risk elderly patients
should be carefully done as undergoing aggressive therapy to lower the systolic blood pressure below 140 mmHg can cause
cardiovascular complications due to the severely reduced DBP and increased pulse pressure. (Korean Circ J 2011;41:349-353)
KEY WORDS: Hypertension; J-curve; Coronary artery disease; Diastolic pressure; Systolic pressure; Stroke.

Introduction and that was published in 2002 Lancet about hypertension

The term “essential hypertension” was first named by Fr-
ank a century ago in 1911, and this was based on his percep-
tion that hypertension is a disease of increased vascular tone
of the small arteries in the whole body.1) Thus, an increase in
blood pressure (BP) is necessary to maintain blood flow to
target organs through sclerotic arteries. As this notion surviv-
ed into the 1970s, physicians were reluctant to lower BP in the
elderly patients since they regarded hypertension as being
compensatory in the aging process.2) The concept was strong-
ly believed because excessive reduction of blood in some hy-
pertensive emergencies led to organ damage such as renal
failure, encephalopathy and myocardial ischemia, and the re-
sult was stroke, heart attacks and even death.3) However, this
idea gradually changed as treating hypertension showed a
better prognosis. A large meta-analysis by Lewington et al.4)
Correspondence: Chang Gyu Park, MD, Cardiovascular Center, Korea
University Guro Hospital, 80 Guro-dong, Guro-gu, Seoul 152-703, Korea
Tel: 82-2-2626-3019, Fax: 82-2-863-1109
E-mail: packcg@kumc.or.kr
• The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.
cc This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Cre-
ative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecom-
mons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commer-
cial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the origi-
nal work is properly cited.
and mortality was comprised of 61 cohort studies targeting
one million subjects with the support of the British Cardiac
Society. According to the analysis, vascular mortality in cor-
onary artery disease (CAD) and stroke decreased as the systo-
lic BP decreased from 180 mmHg to 115 mmHg and the dia-
stolic BP declined from 100 mmHg to 75 mmHg. Since then,
the principle “the lower, the better” has been widely accepted.
The J-Curve Concept
Reports warning against aggressive lowering of BP conti-
nued to exist. This doubt was based on the evidence that a BP
of 0 mmHg results in 100% mortality. In 1979, after a study
with over 6 years follow-up, Stewart5) reported a 5 times high-
er risk of myocardial infarction (MI) in hypertensive patients
with a diastolic blood pressure (DBP) less than 90 mmHg
when compared to those with DBP 100-109 mmHg. About 10
years later, Cruickshank6) reported a strong J-curve phenome-
non between MI and the DBP in moderate to severe hyper-
tensive patients only when they had CAD. The DBP at the
nadir of the J-curve ranged from 85 to 90 mmHg and the J-
curve did not appear in the absence of CAD. In several studies
conducted afterwards, the J-curve in heart attacks and other
heart diseases was consistently observed whereas no J-curve

349
350 J-Curve in Hypertension and CAD
was observed in stroke and renal diseases.7)
Mechanism of the J-Curve and
the Pathophysiologic Approach
Most of the coronary circulation occurs during diastole. Dur-
ing systole, the left ventricular (LV) myocardium contracts
and compresses the intramyocardial vessels to impede its blo-
od flow. If the diastolic pressure is too low, then the myocar-
dial perfusion can be affected. Thus, the J or U curve hypothe-
sis that a DBP less than 70 or 60 mmHg may cause myocardial
ischemia and increase mortality is widely accepted. The cor-
onary perfusion pressure is determined by the gradient be-
tween the coronary and LV diastolic pressures. When the co-
ronary perfusion pressure is lowered to 40-50 mmHg, the
blood flow due to coronary perfusion pressure theoretically
approaches 0 with exclusion of the LV diastolic pressure.8)
The myocardium autoregulates the perfusion pressure in
the range of 45 to 125 mmHg,9) and so the myocardium is ca-
pable of enduring various degrees of proximal coronary ste-
nosis. However, in CAD patients, compromised autoregula-
tion reduces the perfusion pressure distal to a stenosis when
a decrease in the DBP occurs, resulting in an increased LV
filling pressure. It further decreases the coronary perfusion
pressure to intensify the vicious cycle of myocardial ischemia.
As the LVH gets more severe, the LV endocardial ischemia
worsens and myocardial ischemia occurs even in moderately
Incidence (%) of MI/stroke
low ranges of DBP.10)11)
Reverse causality
Other explanations about the existence of the J-curve have
been proposed. Reverse causality views coexisting chronic ill-
ness or a poor health condition as a cause for low DBP, which
leads to increased morbidity and mortality.12-14)
According to Established Populations for Epidemiologic
Studies of the Elderly,15 17% of the population showed a de-
crease in the systolic blood pressure (SBP) greater than 20
mmHg and 22% showed a reduction of the DBP more than
10 mmHg over 3 years.
The group with reduced DBP showed increased all-cause
mortality by 1.5 fold, increased cardiovascular mortality by
1.6 fold and increased cardiovascular events by 1.4 fold. Yet,
Hazard ratio
when adjusted for disease and the functional status, there was
no significant relationship between BP reduction and the haz-
ard ratio. That is, reduced BP in the elderly is a common event
indicating a poor sanitary status and health condition, and its
association with increased mortality is an illusion. Such pa-
tients generally have a tendency of both low SBP and low
DBP; therefore, the PP is not very high.
Increase in pulse pressure
Low DBP is attributed to progressed vascular disease and
a rise in the PP due to increased aortic stiffness, and this is not
the problem itself. In fact, low DBP is related to the J-curve in
isolated systolic hypertension (ISH) patients, but low DBP is
not related to the J-curve in patients with low SBP. An exam-
ple is the Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program stu-
dy16) and the Syst-Eur study17) on elderly ISH patients, where
no increase in myocardial ischemia or cardiovascular disease
(CVD) risk was shown at a DBP of 55-60 mmHg.
Major Clinical Studies on the J-Curve
The International Verapamil SR-Trandolapril (INVEST)
study on 22,000 hypertensive patients with CAD compared
verapamil-based treatment and atenolol based treatment and
the initial results were reported in 2003. On the analysis of
the INVEST study by Messerli et al.18) when considering DBP
of 80-90 mmHg as the lowest point, DBP below 70-80 mmHg
shows the J-curve as an increased risk of MI appears (Fig. 1).
Especially, CAD patients are more sensitive to a reduction in
DBP and there is 2-fold CAD risk difference between a DBP
of 80 mmHg and 65 mmHg. The J-curve phenomenon was
observed in CAD, but not in stroke (Fig. 1). The J-curve effect
was more apparent in CAD patients who did not go through
revascularization than those who underwent revasculariza-
20
MI
Stroke
15
10
5
0
≤60 61-70 71-80 81-90 91-100 101-110 >110
Fig. 1. The Incidence of the myocardial infarction and stroke as
stratified by diastolic blood pressure in the International Verapamil
SR-Trandolapril study.18)
6
Patients with revascularization
5 Patients without revascularization
4
3
2
1
0
55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115
DBP (mmHg)
Fig. 2. Interaction of the J-Curve with coronary revascularization.
The patients who were revascularized better tolerated a lower di-
astolic blood pressure (DBP) than those who were not.18)
 Chang Gyu Park, et al. 351

tion (Fig. 2).
In the Randomized Olmesartan And Diabetes MicroAl-
buminuria Prevention study,19) a SBP below 120 mmHg show-
ed a J-shaped increase of cardiovascular mortality in the ol-
mesartan group compared to the placebo group. The Treating
to New Targets study20) was conducted to observe the relation-
ship between antihypertensive treatment and the CAD risk in
CAD patients. The SBP and DBP were categorized by a 10
mmHg rise, and the primary end point was set as a major car-
diovascular event such as death from CAD, nonfatal MI, re-
suscitation after cardiac arrest and fatal or nonfatal stroke. Af-
ter a median follow-up of 4.9 years, the lowest BP with the
lowest incidence of CVD was 146.3/81.4 mmHg. Especially,
a BP less than 110-120/60-70 mmHg showed the J-curve re-
lationship as the incidence of CVD increased. Yet as SBP de-
creased, the stroke incidence also declined.
According to the Ontarget study21) that targeted the high-
risk group, the effect of lowering the SBP was mainly a re-
duction of the incidence of stroke. As the SBP is reduced be-
low 130 mmHg, there was no difference in the MI incidence wh-
ereas there was a J-shaped increase in the CVD mortality. in contrast to the expected outcome, showed no significant
Controlling Blood Pressure
in Diabetes and the J-Curve
The hypertension optimal treatment (HOT) study,22) which
aimed to determine the DBP target in hypertensive patients,
divided approximately 19,000 patients with essential hyper-
tension and who were 50-80 years old (median age: 61.5) into
three levels target DBPs (below 80, 80-85 and 85-90 mmHg)
and then treatment was begun. As a result, the incidence of
CVD was lower in the lower target DBP groups, with the low-
est incidence for a DBP of 83 mmHg and a SBP of 139 mmHg.
There was no extra benefit in terms of the cardiovascular event
even when the DBP was lowered below 90 mmHg in the non-
diabetic patients, but maintaining the DBP below 80 mmHg
in diabetic patients led to about 50% of extra benefit in reduc-
ing events. In only the smokers, the J-curve was found in the
group with a target DBP below 80 mmHg as this group show-
ed a 2-fold increase in cardiovascular events compared to the
group with a target DBP below 90 mmHg. Based on these
results, the target BP in hypertensive patients with diabetes
was set as 130/80 mmHg.
However, this is supported by only a few studies, and specifi-
cally there is no evidence that using anti-hypertensives in the
patients with BP 130-140/80-90 mmHg offers any extra bene-
fit. The recent data from the Action to Control Cardiovascular
Risk in Diabetes-blood pressure study,23) which investigated
the difference between intensive BP lowering and standard an-
tihypertensive therapy in patients with either diabetes or MI,
difference between the intensive BP lowering group with a
target SBP below 120 mmHg and the standard treatment gr-
oup with a target SBP below 140 mmHg. In addition, a retro-
spective analysis of the INVEST trial to examine the benefit
of intensive BP control in diabetic patients with CAD reveal-
ed that lowering the BP below 130 mmHg did not offer any
additional benefit and even the J-curve phenomenon was
observed as excessive reduction of BP resulted in a higher
mortality rate (Fig. 3).

1.0 10
0.2 Standard

0.8
0.1
Proportion with event

Adjusted hazard ratio

Intensive
0.6
0.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0.4

1.0
0.2 p=0.20

0.0 0.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 <110 110-<115 115-<120 120-<125 125-<130
Years Systolic blood pressure (mmHg)
No. at risk No. at risk 35 98 306 757 1,059
Intensive 2,362 2,273 2,182 2,117 1,770 1,080 298 175 080 No. of deaths 12 17 038 069 0,112
Standard 2,371 2,274 2,196 2,120 1,793 1,127 358 195 108
A   B  
Fig. 3. Results of the peoprotion of events in Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes-blood pressure (effects of intensive blood-
pressure control in type 2 diabetes mellitus) (A) and the Adjusted risk of all-cause mortality in International Verapamil SR-Trandolapril (B).23)
352 J-Curve in Hypertension and CAD

Studies Contradicting observed for patients with DBP below 69 mmHg.

the J-Curve Concept
Reported in 1995, the 16 years of follow-up study of Mul-
tiple Risk Factor Interventional Trial (MRFIT)24) investigated
5,440 patients with prior hospitalization of 2 weeks or more
for MI at the initial screening of MRFIT. In the first 2 years of
the follow-up, all-cause mortality was high in those patients
with a SBP <120 mmHg and those with a DBP <70 mmHg. Af-
terwards, the lowest SBP and DBP strata showed a decreasing
pattern of mortality. If a low DBP is the cause of death, then
the high mortality rate should have continued for 15 years.
Therefore, the authors stated that the high mortality is not
due to a low diastolic pressure, but rather, it was due to a de-
fect in the LV function that led to lower DBP and SBP. It has
also been suggested that the low DBP results from LV dysfunc-
tion and a reduced stroke volume and this leads to increased
mortality.
Glynn et al.25) followed 22,071 men and 39,876 women in
the PHS and WHS for a median of 13.0 years and 6.2 years,
respectively, and they observed an association of the SBP and
DBP with the risk of MI, stroke, coronary artery bypass, an-
gioplasty and cardiovascular death. In this study, both wom-
en and men with lower SBP had a lower incidence of CVD
and they did not show the J-curve relationship. There was a
gender difference in DBP, as a lower DBP reduced CVD with
a slight J-curve shown below 60 mmHg in men, but there was
no association or the J-curve relationship between the DBP
and CVD observed in the women.
The HOT study, consistent with the study of Cruickshank
et al.6) reported a J-shaped relationship between DBP below
85mmHg and the risk of MI only in the patients with CAD,
but not in those without CAD.
According to the Cardiovascular Health Study by Psaty et
al.26) the BP level and CVD risk showed a linear relationship
and the J-curve between DBP and incidence of MI was not
Diabetes mellitus
Why Does the J-Curve Appear
in Coronary Artery Disease, but Not
in Stroke or Renal Disease?
Coronary perfusion occurs in diastole, whereas cerebral
perfusion mainly occurs in systole. Cerebral perfusion is ca-
pable of autoregulation in the range of 40-125 mmHg, so it is
resistant to low BP. As a result, the J-curve phenomenon does
not hold true for the incidence of stroke. Renal perfusion also
occurs mainly in systole, and so no J-curve is observed as well.
Realistic Approach to
Manage the J-Curve
Even today, the J-curve phenomenon in antihypertensive
therapy is still controversial and there have been only limited
studies on its relation to SBP. In light of the results from pre-
vious several studies, the occurrence of increased myocardi-
al ischemia resulting from aggressive lowering of the DBP
should be considered during antihypertensive therapy. Al-
though most of the studies have shown the J-curve for DBP
below 70-80 mmHg, this phenomenon does not appear in
stroke or renal disease. Therefore, since the appearance of the
J-curve in patients with clinically severe LVH, CAD or vascu-
lar diseases is highly probable, caution should be taken to ma-
intain the DBP at minimum of 70 mmHg and possibly to
maintain the DBP between 80-85 mmHg.
The SBP is suggested to be controlled according to a rule
“moderation is the best thing”, rather than the old golden rule
“the lower the better”. In other words, as 2009 revised Europe-
an Guidelines on Hypertension Management27) stated, main-
taining a BP of 130-139/80-85 mmHg in patients with hyper-
tension seems to be appropriate using the current evidence-
based medicine (Fig. 4). Since ISH patients already have low

170 BP Δ
162 Benefit
160 Partial benefit
155 154
No benefit
150 148
153 145
143 144 144 143
140
SBP (mmHg)

140 145 145 144 138 137

141 143
139 140
134 134
130 130
132
128
120

110

100
HOT UK S.Eur ABCD IDNT REN ADV
SHEP MHOPE HT NT IR AM PROG
Fig. 4. The pre- and post-treatment systolic blood pressure clinical benefit in a clinical hypertension study on diabetic patients.18)

DBP in many cases and the PP reduction by decreasing the
SBP has benefits for preventing CVD that outweigh the risks
caused by a reduced DBP, based on the Syst-Eur study,17) low-
ering the SBP while maintaining the DBP above 55-60 mmHg
is suggested if the patients do not have CAD. If they have co-
existing vascular diseases like CAD, then BP control is sug-
gested after reperfusion procedures such as PCI or CABG. A
careful approach should be used for BP control in high-risk
elderly patients as undergoing aggressive therapy to lower the
SBP below 140 mmHg can cause cardiovascular complica-
tions due to the severely reduced DBP and increased PP.
Conclusion
The current national and international antihypertensive tr-
eatment guidelines recommend a BP goal of <140/90 mmHg,
and <130/80 mmHg in patients with CAD, chronic renal
disease and other CVD. However, the recent large clinical stu-
dies have shown the J-curve phenomenon in patients with a
DBP <80 mmHg as well as in patients with a SBP <130
mmHg, and the studies demonstrated no significant differ-
ences in the risk of cardiovascular complications between ag-
gressive antihypertensive therapy and standard therapy. Yet
the J-shaped curve does not appear for stroke patients, and
this shows a relationship consistent with the principle “the
lower the better”.
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