High Blood Pressure Is Found Widespread Among Older
People
By: Reuters
New York Times, February 27, 2002
CHICAGO, Feb. 26 (Reuters) — Nine out of 10 older
Americans develop high blood pressure, and although medications can lower
it, better diets and more exercise might arrest the problem before it
develops, researchers said today.
The risk of developing the problem is 90 percent for
men and women ages 55 to 65, according to the Framingham Heart Study of
the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. More than half the
55-year-old participants and two-thirds of the 65- year-olds developed
high blood pressure within 10 years, said a phase of the study that covers
1976 to 1998.
The study has monitored residents of Framingham,
Mass., since 1948. Because that Boston suburb is predominantly white and
blacks are known to have higher rates of high blood pressure, the authors
called the findings conservative for the country as a whole. The Journal
of the American Medical Association is publishing the research today.
Because of the readier availability of drugs to
combat hypertension, the participants were less likely in the recent study
period to have exceedingly high blood pressure, the researchers said.
"We know that high blood pressure is a
preventable condition," an author of the study, Ramachandran Vasan,
said. "So middle-age Americans should adopt healthier lifestyles that
are more conducive to optimal levels of blood pressure. This would mean
watching the diet you eat, watching the salt content, watching the fat
content, exercising more regularly and getting your blood pressure checked
periodically."
The health risks associated with high blood pressure
include heart disease, strokes and kidney ailments.
Another study, released on Sunday and financed
Bristol-Myers Squibb, said physicians were undertreating high blood
pressure in as many as 75 percent of patients.
Writing in The Archives of Internal Medicine,
researchers from Cornell University and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Cancer Center said doctors sometimes failed to prescribe hypertension
drugs, in part because they underestimated the importance of systolic
blood pressure.
The survey of hypertensive patients found some
doctors only prescribed drugs when diastolic blood pressure, recorded when
the heart is at rest, rose above a threshold level.
High blood pressure is neglected in far too many
patients, Dr. Jerome Cohen of the St. Louis University Medical Center
wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.
"The problem of inadequately treated and
controlled hypertension is so huge," Dr. Cohen said, "that even
taking into consideration those patients for whom there are extenuating or
special circumstances, there are literally millions of hypertensive
patients who can and should be treated."
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