Worldwide study charts high blood pressure’s rise

WASHINGTON – The numbers are a shock: Nearly 1 billion people worldwide have high blood pressure, and over half a billion more will harbor this silent killer by 2025.

It’s not just a problem for the ever-fattening Western world. In parts of Africa, high blood pressure is becoming common.

That translates into millions of deaths from heart disease alone. Yet hypertension doesn’t command the attention of, say, bird flu, which so far has killed fewer than 200 people.

“Hypertension has gone a bit out of fashion,” says Dr. Jan Ostergren of Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital, who co-authored a first-of-its-kind analysis of the global impact of high blood pressure.

The idea: rev up world governments to fight bad blood pressure just as countries have banded together in the past to fight infectious diseases.

International heart specialists welcome the push.

“Even in the United States, the majority of people with high blood pressure are not treated adequately,” says Dr. Sidney Smith of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who advises the World Heart Federation. “Look at China, look at Africa, go around the world. It is a major risk factor.”

And the dangers go well beyond the heart. High blood pressure is a leading cause of strokes and kidney failure. It also plays a role in blindness and even dementia.

Patients seldom notice symptoms until organs are damaged.

Yet treating high blood pressure before that happens is a medical best-buy. Improving diet and exercise can help. When that’s not enough, blood pressure drugs are among the oldest and cheapest on the market – 21 cents a day for a leading diuretic.

Ostergren joined experts from the London School of Economics and the State University of New York to assemble two teams of specialists and map what they call the coming crisis of hypertension: 1.56 billion people are expected to have it by 2025.

With funding from drug maker Novartis Pharma AG, they’re providing copies to governments and health officials around the globe; a briefing in Washington is set for Thursday.

High blood pressure affects nearly one in three adult Americans, or 72 million people. About a third have their condition well-controlled, not nearly enough but better than other countries that track treatment, the report found.

Normal blood pressure is measured at less than 120 over 80. Anyone can get high blood pressure, a level of 140 over 90 or more. But being overweight and inactive, and eating too much salt, all increase the risk. So does getting older.