Health-promoting text messages to patients with hypertension—A randomized controlled trial in Swedish primary healthcare
(2025) In PLoS ONE 20. p.1-14- Abstract
Due to the high prevalence and great cardiovascular risks of hypertension, we need effective and evidence-based treatment strategies. Health-promoting one-way text messages could be a beneficial complement to antihypertensive drugs. However, this has yet to be proven in a primary healthcare setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate if health-promoting text messages could improve patients’ blood pressure in primary care. The PUSHME (Primary care Usage of Health promoting Messages) randomized controlled trial included 401 patients from 10 primary health care centers in southern Sweden. Patients in the intervention group received four text messages weekly for six months along with treatment as usual. The PUSHME study was... (More)
Due to the high prevalence and great cardiovascular risks of hypertension, we need effective and evidence-based treatment strategies. Health-promoting one-way text messages could be a beneficial complement to antihypertensive drugs. However, this has yet to be proven in a primary healthcare setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate if health-promoting text messages could improve patients’ blood pressure in primary care. The PUSHME (Primary care Usage of Health promoting Messages) randomized controlled trial included 401 patients from 10 primary health care centers in southern Sweden. Patients in the intervention group received four text messages weekly for six months along with treatment as usual. The PUSHME study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04407962). Patients in both the control group and the intervention group lowered their blood pressure during the study, but there was no significant difference in change between the groups. However, subgroup analyses showed that there was a significantly larger reduction in diastolic blood pressure favoring the intervention for patients with poor self-rated health: -4.5 mmHg vs -1.4 mmHg (p = 0.019), and patients with a sedentary lifestyle: -5.2 mmHg vs -2.4 mmHg (p = 0.034). Our findings indicate that text messages with lifestyle advice to a general hypertensive population do not have any significant effect on blood pressure. However, it could be an effective complement to conventional antihypertensive drug treatment for specific patient groups.
(Less)
- author
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-02
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- PLoS ONE
- volume
- 20
- article number
- e0314868
- pages
- 1 - 14
- publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85217821041
- pmid:39937817
- ISSN
- 1932-6203
- DOI
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0314868
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Borgström Bolmsjö et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- id
- ec7da0e0-1e00-4e63-9227-9a95a8963a71
- date added to LUP
- 2025-03-28 16:47:31
- date last changed
- 2025-08-02 02:30:18
@article{ec7da0e0-1e00-4e63-9227-9a95a8963a71, abstract = {{<p>Due to the high prevalence and great cardiovascular risks of hypertension, we need effective and evidence-based treatment strategies. Health-promoting one-way text messages could be a beneficial complement to antihypertensive drugs. However, this has yet to be proven in a primary healthcare setting. The purpose of this study was to investigate if health-promoting text messages could improve patients’ blood pressure in primary care. The PUSHME (Primary care Usage of Health promoting Messages) randomized controlled trial included 401 patients from 10 primary health care centers in southern Sweden. Patients in the intervention group received four text messages weekly for six months along with treatment as usual. The PUSHME study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04407962). Patients in both the control group and the intervention group lowered their blood pressure during the study, but there was no significant difference in change between the groups. However, subgroup analyses showed that there was a significantly larger reduction in diastolic blood pressure favoring the intervention for patients with poor self-rated health: -4.5 mmHg vs -1.4 mmHg (p = 0.019), and patients with a sedentary lifestyle: -5.2 mmHg vs -2.4 mmHg (p = 0.034). Our findings indicate that text messages with lifestyle advice to a general hypertensive population do not have any significant effect on blood pressure. However, it could be an effective complement to conventional antihypertensive drug treatment for specific patient groups.</p>}}, author = {{Borgström Bolmsjö, Beata and Bredfelt, Jenny and Calling, Susanna and Glock, Hanna and Nymberg, Veronica Milos and Bengtsson Boström, Kristina and Jakobsson, Ulf and Nymberg, Peter and Pallon, Jon and Rööst, Mattias and Wolff, Moa}}, issn = {{1932-6203}}, language = {{eng}}, pages = {{1--14}}, publisher = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}}, series = {{PLoS ONE}}, title = {{Health-promoting text messages to patients with hypertension—A randomized controlled trial in Swedish primary healthcare}}, url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314868}}, doi = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0314868}}, volume = {{20}}, year = {{2025}}, }