Research hypertension in LMIC's regarding prevalence, incidence, how/why it is underdiagnosed, and factors that predispose to HTN in LMICs. Research rural vs urban HTN (i.e. how does food scarcity aff

Prevalence of Hypertension (HTN)

Hypertension is the leading cause of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and premature death worldwide. Studies have shown that a third of all adults are estimated to have hypertension, which translates to about 1.4 billion adults (Schutte et al., 2021). Two-thirds of adults affected by hypertension reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Honduras (Mills et al., 2020). The prevalence of hypertension is steadily increasing within many LMICs with projections estimating a 30% increase in prevalence by the year 2025. Such countries have also reported the highest age-standardized death rates from CVD and systolic BP (SBP). According to data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, results showed the summary exposure value (SEV) of the past 3 decades in the different World Bank regions and indicated an increasing trend in high SBP in several regions, specifically in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, East Asia, and the Pacific. In addition to the GBD data, a recent study that pooled data from 44 LMICs (1,100,507 participants) showed the prevalence of hypertension to be 17% (Geldsetzer et al., 2019). The 2019 May Measurement Month campaign (1,508,130 screened) reported that 34% had hypertension. Among those screened, 29.3% had hypertension in the South Asia region, while East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa reported 30.6% and 27.9%, respectively (Beaney et al., 2020). As of 2017, Honduras reported a prevalence of hypertension at 22.6% (Honduras, 2017).

Incidence of Hypertension (HTN)

Beaney, T., Schutte, A. E., Stergiou, G. S., Borghi, C., Burger, D., Charchar, F., Cro, S., Diaz, A., Damasceno, A., Espeche, W., Jose, A. P., Khan, N., Kokubo, Y., Maheshwari, A., Marin, M. J., More, A., Neupane, D., Nilsson, P., Patil, M., & Prabhakaran, D. (2020). May Measurement Month 2019. Hypertension, 76(2), 333–341. https://doi.org/10.1161/hypertensionaha.120.14874

Geldsetzer, P., Manne-Goehler, J., Marcus, M.-E., Ebert, C., Zhumadilov, Z., Wesseh, C. S., Tsabedze, L., Supiyev, A., Sturua, L., Bahendeka, S. K., Sibai, A. M., Quesnel-Crooks, S., Norov, B., Mwangi, K. J., Mwalim, O., Wong-McClure, R., Mayige, M. T., Martins, J. S., Lunet, N., & Labadarios, D. (2019). The state of hypertension care in 44 low-income and middle-income countries: a cross-sectional study of nationally representative individual-level data from 1·1 million adults. The Lancet, 394(10199), 652–662. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(19)30955-9

Honduras. (2017). Paho.org. https://www.paho.org/salud-en-las-americas-2017/?page_id=133

Mills, K. T., Stefanescu, A., & He, J. (2020a). The global epidemiology of hypertension. Nature Reviews Nephrology, 16(4), 223–237. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41581-019-0244-2

Schutte, A. E., Srinivasapura Venkateshmurthy, N., Mohan, S., & Prabhakaran, D. (2021). Hypertension in Low- and Middle-Income Countries. Circulation Research, 128(7), 808–826. https://doi.org/10.1161/circresaha.120.318729