India Breaking News

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Average blood pressure falls globally, shoots up in India

NEW DELHI: Nearly 139 million Indians were suffering from high blood pressure (BP) at the end of 2008 14% of the global burden of uncontrolled hypertension. From 1980-2008, the number of Indians suffering from high BP rose by 87 million, while the percentage of population suffering from the ailment rose from 21% to 26%.

The latest data of the "Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors" study, published in the British medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday, shows that while the average BP of humans declined globally, it actually increased among both men and women in India.

The average BP went down by 2.7mm mercury among women globally, while increasing by 2.4mm mercury in India. In men, it decreased by 2.3 mm mercury globally in the past three decades whereas in India it went up by 2.2 mm mercury.

Speaking to TOI from London, Prof Majid Ezzati from the School of Public Health at Imperial College (London) said, "Any increase of BP is bad specially when the trend globally is of dipping BP levels. In an average Indian woman, it went up from 120.9mm mercury to 123.1mm mercury in the past 28 years while in men, it went up from 122.1mm mercury to 123.9mm mercury. In women, BP levels increased by almost 0.8mm mercury per decade since 1980 while in men, it increased by 0.9mm mercury per decade. It is easy to control high BP and India must immediately act."

Dr Anoop Misra, chairman of Fortis` diabetes, metabolic diseases and endocrinology centre, said, "Hypertension is one risk factor in Indians which shows little urban-rural difference, unlike obesity and diabetes. Clearly, overall increase in BP, both in men and women, is due to increasing salt intake and escalating sedentary behaviour. Albeit small, this increase in blood pressure would increase heart attacks and strokes substantially in India. At present, hypertension is directly responsible for 57% of deaths due to stroke and 24% of deaths caused by heart attack."

High BP is the leading r! isk fact or for cardiovascular disease mortality, causing more than 7 million deaths every year worldwide. The study says that though prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension dipped from 33% in 1980 to 29% in 2008 in men and from 29% to 25% in women, the actual number of people with uncontrolled hypertension increased from 605 million in 1980 to 978 million in 2008.

"This was mainly due to population growth, ageing and faulty diet. We estimated trends in systolic blood pressure (SBP) rather than diastolic blood pressure (DBP), because prospective studies strongly suggest that SBP is a better predictor of cardiovascular disease risk, especially in older adults above 55 years of age in whom most deaths from cardiovascular disease occur," Prof Ezzati added.

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