High blood pressure doubled globally in 30 years, study shows

The number of people living with high blood pressure more than doubled since 1990, according to a major study published yesterday that found half of all sufferers – about 720 million people – went untreated in 2019.

Hypertension is directly linked to more than 8.5 million deaths each year, and is the leading risk factor for stroke, heart and liver disease.

To find out how rates of hypertension have developed globally over the past 30 years, an international team from Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration analyzed data from more than 1,200 national studies covering nearly every country in the world.

They used modeling to estimate high blood pressure rates across populations and the number of people taking medication. The analysis found that in 2019 there were 626 million women and 652 million men living with hypertension.

This represented roughly double the estimated 331 million women and 317 million men with the condition in 1990.

The analysis found that 41 percent of women and 51 percent of men with high blood pressure were unaware of their condition, meaning hundreds of millions of people.

"Despite medical and pharmacological advances over decades, global progress in hypertension management has been slow, and the vast majority of people with hypertension remain untreated," said Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London and senior study author.