# Blood Pressure and Kidney Function - SPRINT vs Electronic Health Record Data

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · 2020 · $724,462

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Hypertension is prevalent in 68.5 million U.S. adults and is one of the leading chronic disease risk factors in the
world. The Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) evaluated the effect of intensive (<120 mmHg)
and standard (<140 mmHg) BP targets on cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality. Intensive BP lowering
was associated with a 25% reduction in cardiovascular events and a 27% reduction in all-cause mortality. BP
measurement in SPRINT followed guideline adherent protocols. Unfortunately, BP measurement in routine
clinical practice is often not adherent to American Heart Association recommendations; inappropriate
technique is associated with an overestimation of BP by approximately 5 to 15 mmHg. Therefore, the achieved
BP in routine clinical practice during the treat to target phase of SPRINT is unknown. An additional limitation of
SPRINT is that acute kidney injury (AKI) was only assessed in the inpatient setting and adjudication was based
on billing codes and discharge summaries, not the gold standard for assessing AKI – creatinine values.
Fortunately, SPRINT was one of the first large trials performed in the era of electronic health records (EHRs).
The timing of the SPRINT trial provides a unique opportunity to link SPRINT data to EHR data to perform
analyses that would be otherwise infeasible within either data source alone. The goals of the proposed study
are to a) inform implementation of the SPRINT results by comparing contemporaneous BP in the routine clinic
setting to those measured at SPRINT study visits, b) provide creatinine values to assess the effect of intensive
and standard BP targets on rates of AKI and other renal outcomes during the trial and in long-term, post-trial
follow-up, and c) inform the design of future pragmatic clinical trials by reporting on the concordance between
EHR based and formal SPRINT based assessment of renal and cardiovascular outcomes. For the proposed
study, SPRINT and EHR data (BP and creatinine values and ICD-9/10 codes) from a number of the larger
SPRINT sites will be linked. The specific aims are to evaluate 1) the concordance between BP measured in the
general clinic setting to BP measured using guideline recommended technique at SPRINT research visits; 2)
the effect of intensive versus standard BP targets on renal and cardiovascular outcomes using SPRINT and
EHR based creatinine values; and 3) the concordance between EHR based and formal SPRINT based
assessment of renal and cardiovascular outcomes to inform the design of future pragmatic clinical trials. Our
results will support physicians and clinic managers in their efforts to implement appropriate BP measurement
protocols and will inform implementation of the SPRINT results. Finally, this study will be the first to link clinical
trial data with EHR data on a large scale and will serve as an example for how these types of data can be
merged to leverage the strengths of both data sources.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9964523
- **Project number:** 5R01HL136679-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
- **Principal Investigator:** Paul Englund Drawz
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $724,462
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-08-17 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9964523

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9964523, Blood Pressure and Kidney Function - SPRINT vs Electronic Health Record Data (5R01HL136679-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9964523. Licensed CC0.

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