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PURPOSE OF REVIEW: High blood pressure (BP) is the world’s leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death. This review highlights findings during the past 18 months that apply to the management of high BP in adults in the context of the 2017 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (AHA) BP guideline. RECENT FINDINGS: A comprehensive meta-analysis of clinical trials that employed a novel statistical method identified a substantially linear relationship between dietary sodium intake and BP, strongly supporting the AHA daily dietary sodium intake recommendation of

Medical societies from the USA have jointly published new clinical guidelines on hypertension1. Perhaps the biggest change from previous guidelines — one that puts the USA at odds with most other countries — is to reclassify hypertension. A systolic blood pressure of >120 mmHg is now labelled as elevated blood pressure, a systolic blood pressure of 130–139 mmHg or diastolic blood pressure of 80–89 mmHg is labelled as stage 1 hypertension, and a systolic blood pressure of ≥140 mmHg or a diastolic blood pressure of ≥90 mmHg is labelled as stage 2 hypertension1 (Fig. 1). The writing committee estimate that this change will increase the proportion of the US adult population labelled as having hypertension from 32% to 46% — is this reasonable?