The INDANA research program has been launched in 1990, and is still alive. It has served as a basis for several PhD theses (Florent Boutitie, Li Wei, François Gueyffier, Théodora Bejan Angoulvant, Ivanny Marchant) or master theses (Rémy Boussageon, Ying Wu, Amira Essid, Marc Cerou). Its main results can be listed here :
- Setup of a risk score in hypertensive, specifically parameterized on a hypertensive population and integrating renal function parameter ;
- Observation that women have a relative benefit similar to that of men, their apparent lesser benefit being observed on an absolute scale ; this was a good illustration of the interest of the effect model law, theorized later by Jean-Pierre Boissel.
- Demonstration of the huge absolute benefit of blood pressure lowering drugs (BPLD) in secondary prevention after stroke, even if the relative risk is not as big as in primary prevention in hypertensive individuals, confirmed late by the PATS trial and the PROGRESS trial.
- Demonstration of the important absolute benefit of BPLD in hypertensive people after 80 years of age, observed on stroke and on congestive heart failure, but with a doubt on an increase of mortality. These results were confirmed by the HYVET pilot trial. The HYVET large scale trial confirmed the benefit on stroke and heart failure, but was prematurely stopped on a relative benefit on mortality, which was eventually not significant. The meta-analysis completed by a meta-regression showed that there was no significant increase in mortality overall, and suggested that a too heavy burden, or a too low BP target, could explain unfavorable trend on mortality.
- The analysis of treatment changes over time showed an early significant effect on coronary events within the first year, decreasing thereafter on a relative scale, whereas the pattern for stroke was exactly the reverse : no effect detected at all during the first year, and a progressive and intensified effect during the 4 later years.
- The part of the relative risk reduction explained by BP lowering is not 100%, but around 60% for stroke, and remains to be defined for coronary events. This has been addressed in two ways : in a model taking into account a 6 month BP measure, and in a model taking into account the predicted BP at different times of follow-up from a linear regression of the 6 months and annual BP measures.
- Original methods have been proposed to identify the responders to BP lowering drugs, and compute the absolute benefit with its confidence interval, for a given individual profile.