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Hypertension rate could be as high as 20% in young adults
Nguyen Q. Epidemiology. 2011;22:532-541.
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New findings have revealed that rates of hypertension among young adults may be close to 20%, nearly five times the rate found among participants of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Senior study researcher Kathleen Mullan Harris, PhD, and colleagues examined 14,252 participants from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), Wave IV study, and compared them with participants from NHANES 2007-2008 (n=733). All of the participants were aged 24 to 32 years and had BP of at least 140 mm Hg/90 mm Hg.
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Overall, rates of hypertension were much higher for Add Health study participants (19% vs. 4%), although self-reported history was only slightly higher (11% vs. 9%). Among participants with self-reported hypertension, approximately 50% of those in Add Health vs. 20% in NHANES actually had elevated BP by study measurement.
Adjustments for differences in participant characteristics, use of antihypertensive medications, examination time, as well as the consumption of food, caffeine and cigarettes before BP measurement had little influence on these estimates.
“The large and unexplained differences between Add Health and NHANES merit further investigation,” the researchers wrote. “US CHD mortality and policy models rely heavily on NHANES systolic BP distributions and, in some cases, on optimistic assumptions regarding relatively small decreases of 0–1 mm Hg per year in population mean systolic BP.”
Also meriting further scrutiny, they wrote, is the prevalence of hypertension found among Add Health Wave IV participants, indicating an unexpectedly high risk for CVD among young adults in the United States.
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