TNNI3 and Hypertension: Focusing on the first 5 years of follow-up, proportional hazards models (adjusting for age, BMI, smoking history, arterial hypertension, history of diabetes and past (pre-baseline) occurrences of myocardial infarction or stroke), showed an approximate 4.7-fold increase (HR = 4.66 [95% CI 1.73–12.50]) in risk of cardiac death for participants with serum levels of cTnI ≥ 20 ng/L, and a close to 1.7-fold increase in risk (HR = 1.69 [CI 0.57–5.02) for participants with intermediately elevated cTnI (cTnI = 10 ng/L), relative to those with cTnI levels below the quantification limit (Table 2).