For men, having a parent with hypertension greatly
increases the risk for developing high blood
pressure throughout adulthood, according to the results of
a long-term prospective study conducted
by researchers at the Johns Hopkins schools of Public Health and
Medicine. The study is published in
the March 24 issue of the journal Archives of Internal
Medicine.
"Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is known to run
in families. We found a strong
independent association between hypertension in both
mothers and fathers and elevated blood
pressure in men," said Nae-Yuh Wang, lead author of the
study and an assistant professor with the
Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical
Research. "Our findings emphasize the
importance of asking patients about parental hypertension
to identify those who are at risk for
developing hypertension, especially at a young age, for
both population-based and individual-level
interventions."
Hypertension can lead to cardiovascular disease,
stroke and kidney disease.
The study included 1,160 men enrolled in the
Precursors Study in 1947. All the participants
attended medical school at Johns Hopkins. At enrollment in
the Precursors Study, the participants
were examined and completed questionnaires on their medical
history and then were re-examined
annually for the next 54 years.
After adjusting for factors known to contribute to
high blood pressure, such as cigarette and
alcohol use, the researchers found that the risk of
developing hypertension greatly increased for men
when both parents developed hypertension before age 55. Men
whose mother and father both had
early-onset hypertension had a 6.2-fold higher risk of
developing the disease in their adult lives when
compared to men without hypertensive parents. The risk of
developing the disease at age 35 was 20-
fold for men when both parents had early-onset
hypertension.
"This study underscores the importance of primary
prevention and blood pressure monitoring
early in life for men with parental hypertension,
especially those who have a parent with early-onset
hypertension," said senior author Michael J. Klag, who
directs the Precursors Study and is dean of the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The study was written by Wang, J. Hunter Young, Lucy
A. Meoni, Daniel E. Ford, Thomas P.
Erlinger and Klag.
The research was supported in part by grants from the
National Institutes of Health.