Health: In married couples, high blood pressure often affects both partners

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“High blood pressure is known to be common in middle-aged and older adults, but we were surprised to find that in many older married couples in the United States, England, China and India, both the husband and wife had high blood pressure.” said lead study author Chihua Li, quoted by the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Baltimore/USA) in the German Medical Journal. “For example, in the US, more than 35 percent of couples over the age of 50 had high blood pressure.”

The similarity of important health parameters between long-term spouses in terms of health and disease has long been known. For the first time, the study authors have proven this effect for one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease in very different countries and regions of the world.

As part of their scientific work, Chihua Li and his co-authors analyzed the blood pressure measurements of approximately 33,000 couples from the US, Britain, China and India. These were heterosexual partnerships with a shared household.

The review found that there was a high degree of ‘agreement’ between spouses when it came to the frequency of high blood pressure: in Britain, 47 percent of married couples had ‘regular’ high blood pressure, in the US 38 percent , in China 21 percent. and in India 20 percent.

If the husband had high blood pressure, their wives in the US and Britain were nine percent more likely to also have high blood pressure than the wives of men without high blood pressure. This association was even greater in India (plus 19 percent) and China (plus 26 percent).

In any case, the study results could provide the starting point for better diagnosis and treatment of hypertension: if one partner is diagnosed with high blood pressure, it could also be clarified whether the second partner is also affected, as the researchers suggest. But high blood pressure also has a lot to do with lifestyle: diet (salt consumption), physical inactivity, stress and other factors. ‘Couple therapy’ could also play a role here.

(SDA)

Source: Blick