Can reducing blood pressure variability after a stroke improve outcomes?

Fourth Joint Stroke Association/BHF Programme Grant: Blood pressure variability- definition, natural history, prognosis and treatment following acute stroke (fourth call)

Many people who have had a sudden (or acute) stroke have high blood pressure, which can fall several days afterwards. Currently, doctors don’t know the best way to manage blood pressure in these acute stroke patients. We need to understand how blood pressure changes at various times after a person has had a stroke, and find out how these changes affect a patient’s outcome. Professor Thompson Robinson from the University of Leicester, with colleagues from the University of East Anglia and the University of Oxford, have been awarded a grant from the BHF and The Stroke Association. They will carry out a 12-month study to find out how people’s blood pressure varies after a stroke, if changes in blood pressure variability is related to clinical outcome, and at the same time assess a method to accurately measure blood pressure variability that works in clinical practice and is acceptable to patients. Once they have optimised a clinical method to measure blood pressure variability, the researchers will run a trial to find out if, when given to people within 24 hours of stroke symptom onset, certain blood pressure-lowering drugs are more effective at improving blood pressure variability and preventing further strokes than others. This research will examine how to measure blood pressure variability reliably, if it affects the clinical outcome for a patient after a stroke, and if certain drugs are better at reducing the risk of people having recurrent strokes or other heart or circulatory problems later on.