The number of Americans with high blood pressure is on the rise thanks in large part to growing rates of obesity, researchers said late on Tuesday. But increasing numbers of those with high blood pressure, also called hypertension, are getting the condition treated, researchers from the US government’s National Institutes of Health wrote in the journal Hypertension. High blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart attack, heart failure or kidney failure. It is sometimes called the “silent killer” because it has no symptoms, and many people have it for years without knowing it.
Data spanning six years through 2004 showed that 29 per cent of US adults had high blood pressure, compared to 24 per cent in the six-year period ending in 1994, the researchers said.
Another 30 per cent of Americans in the most recent period had a condition called pre hypertension with slightly elevated blood pressure levels that often worsens into full-fledged high blood pressure, the researchers said.
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