Mortality and treated blood pressure in patients of the European Working Party on High Blood Pressure in the Elderly. Elderly hypertensive patients were randomly assigned to treatment with diuretics and methyldopa (n = 352) or placebo (n = 339), and divided into three groups, each according to their blood pressures, after nine months of treatment. Subsequently, 65 placebo patients and 56 treated patients died. A U-shaped relation was seen in treated patients between mortality and systolic blood pressure, and in placebo patients between mortality and diastolic blood pressure. Whereas in treated patients, the highest mortality was seen in patients with the lowest diastolic pressure, the lowest mortality was seen in the group with the highest diastolic pressure. The increased mortality in treated patients with the lowest blood pressure may not be drug-induced, but an expression of deterioration in general health, as indicated by the decreases in body weight and hemoglobin levels found in patients with the lowest blood pressures in previous analyses of these data. 