(Press-News.org) Roughly 19 percent of young adults may have high blood pressure, according to an analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which is supported by the National Institutes of Health.
The researchers took blood pressure readings of more than 14,000 men and women between 24 and 32 years of age who were enrolled in the long-running study.
The analysis was conducted by Kathleen Mullan Harris, Ph.D., principal investigator of the study, and colleagues at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study's first author was Quynh C. Nguyen, of the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health.
The findings were published online in Epidemiology.
The findings differ from those of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which reported high blood pressure in 4 percent of adults 20 to 39 years of age.
The study authors were unable to pinpoint any reasons for the difference between the two studies.
"The Add Health analysis raises interesting questions," said Steven Hirschfeld, Associate Director for Clinical Research for the NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which provides major funding for the study. "Investigations into the reasons underlying the reported differences between the Add Health and NHANES findings will no doubt yield additional insight into the measurement of high blood pressure in the young adult population."
The Add Health study defined high blood pressure (hypertension) as 140/90 millimeters of mercury or greater. High blood pressure is a serious condition that can lead to coronary heart disease (also called coronary artery disease), heart failure, stroke, kidney failure, and other health problems.
Along with funding from the NICHD, the Add Health study also receives funding from 23 other federal agencies and private organizations.
"We explored several possible explanations for the difference between this study and NHANES, including participant characteristics, where they were examined, and the types of devices for measuring their blood pressure," Dr. Harris said. "None of these factors could account for the differences in estimates between the two surveys."
For the analysis, all 15,701 respondents to the most recent Add Health interview were asked whether they had been told by a health care professional that they had high blood pressure. After the interview, respondents remained seated for five minutes and study technicians took three readings of their blood pressure. The study technicians checked the accuracy of each reading and the average of the last two readings was entered into the study database. The Add Health researchers attempted to collect blood pressure readings on all of the study's participants, including those in prisons and in the military.
High blood pressure was more prevalent among the Add Health respondents (19 percent) than in the NHANES respondents (4 percent). The study authors noted, however, that the proportion of respondents who reported they had been told by a health care provider that they had high blood pressure was similar: 11 percent for Add Health and 9 percent for NHANES.
The study authors wrote that many young people are unaware that they have high blood pressure. In such screenings of a large number of participants, it is expected that more participants would be found to have high blood pressure upon examination than would report that they had high blood pressure in the past.
The Add Health survey results fit this expected pattern, with 11 percent saying they had earlier been told they had high blood pressure, and 19 percent later having been found to have high blood pressure upon examination. This pattern was reversed for NHANES, with 9 percent reporting they had high blood pressure, and 4 percent measured with high blood pressure upon examination
###
About the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD): The NICHD sponsors research on development, before and after birth; maternal, child, and family health; reproductive biology and population issues; and medical rehabilitation. For more information, visit the Institute's Web site at http://www.nichd.nih.gov/.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
END
If you have suffered a personal injury in the Atlanta area, you will probably need to find a qualified Georgia personal injury attorney. You may be entitled to receive compensation for your injuries, but it can be difficult to collect the compensation you deserve. If the other party denied fault or the insurance only offered you a portion of the money to which you are entitled, an experienced lawyer can help you protect your rights.
Beginning Your Search
As you are searching for an Atlanta personal injury lawyer, carefully investigate and speak with several personal ...
MONTREAL, March 26, 2011 – Recalling painful memories while under the influence of the drug metyrapone reduces the brain's ability to re-record the negative emotions associated with them, according to University of Montreal researchers at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress of Louis-H. Lafontaine Hospital. The team's study challenges the theory that memories cannot be modified once they are stored in the brain. "Metyrapone is a drug that significantly decreases the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that is involved in memory recall," explained lead author Marie-France ...
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found a rare class of oddball stars called blue stragglers in the hub of our Milky Way, the first detected within our galaxy's bulge.
Blue stragglers are so named because they seemingly lag behind in the aging process, appearing younger than the population from which they formed. While they have been detected in many distant star clusters, and among nearby stars, they never have been seen inside the core of our galaxy.
It is not clear how blue stragglers form. A common theory is that they emerge from binary pairs. As the more massive ...
Allergan seems to have a history of happy accidents.
The specialty pharmaceutical company came across the wrinkle-smoothing benefits of BOTOX while testing the compound as a treatment for eyelid spasms. Then it stumbled onto the eyelash-stimulating abilities of bimatoprost, a topical glaucoma medication that became the active ingredient in Latisse.
Latisse is currently the only FDA-approved treatment for eyelash hypotrichosis, abnormal or inadequate eyelash growth. Latisse is thought to work by increasing the number of eyelashes your eyelid can sprout and extending ...
Richmond, Va. (May 25, 2011) – The cost of cancer care is threatening to bankrupt our healthcare system. New drugs are prolonging life, but at staggering costs. This coupled with aging baby boomers and an increasing population mean the U.S. will spend $173 billion annually on cancer care by the year 2020. This trend is not sustainable; however, there are evidence-based ways to maintain or improve the quality of care while saving money for the new therapies being discovered every day.
So argue VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers Thomas Smith, M.D., and Bruce E. Hillner, ...
New Jersey's State Board of Medical Examiners proclaims its mission as the protection of the public's health, safety and welfare. Functionally, that means providing licenses to medical professionals, adopting practice standards, looking into allegations of misconduct and, most important of all, meting out discipline to physicians who fail to provide competent, qualified and ethical service to patients.
But a report from the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen finds that the board failed to discipline 57 percent of licensed health professionals whose practice privileges ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — "One person, one vote" is often the rallying cry for democratic reform, suggesting everyone should get an equal say in their government.
Yet in some of the oldest and largest democracies, some votes are worth far more than others by design. A Wyoming voter, for instance, is significantly over-represented compared with a California voter. Each state has two U.S. senators, but California has 66 times more people.
How much does it matter? According to a recent study of decades of data, from the U.S. and eight other countries, it matters a lot when it ...
Young children cope with divorce differently than older children. Toddlers are just beginning to become facile with language and parents may not always know what they need. So, what are some basic rules that parents can follow to help toddlers transition from one home to two homes as painlessly as possible.
1. Do not trash talk your ex in front of your child.
Toddlers and preschoolers pick up on even the subtlest conflict between parents. When parents are living in the same home, it can be hard on a child. But when parents move into separate home, the child may internalize ...
AURORA, Colo. (May 25, 2011) - A drug recently approved by the Food & Drug Administration for the treatment of prostate cancer is proving to give some patients the gift of time. A new study shows abiraterone acetate extends the lives of men with the most advanced form of the disease by about four months. The study in the May 26, 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine was co-authored by Thomas W. Flaig, MD, medical oncologist at the University of Colorado Hospital's Tony Grampsas Urologic Oncology Clinic and assistant professor at the University of Colorado School ...
Los Angeles, CA (May 26, 2011) – Precision tinted lenses have been used widely to reduce visual perceptual distortions in poor readers, and are increasingly used for migraine sufferers, but until now the science behind these effects has been unclear. Now research published in the journal Cephalalgia, published by SAGE, uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for the first time to suggest a neurological basis for these visual remedies.
The new research shows how coloured glasses tuned to each migraine sufferer work by normalizing activity in the brain. The researchers ...
