Elevated Blood Pressure Increases Pneumonia Risk: Epidemiological Association and Mendelian Randomization in the UK Biobank

BackgroundSmall studies have correlated hypertension with pneumonia risk; whether this is recapitulated in larger prospective studies, and represents a causal association, is unclear.MethodsWe estimated the risk for prevalent hypertension with incident respiratory diseases over mean follow-up of 8 years among 377,143 British participants in the UK Biobank. Mendelian randomization of blood pressure on pneumonia was implemented using 75...