Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, Control and Risk Factors Associated with Hypertension among Adults in Southern China, 2013

To investigate the prevalence, awareness, treatment, control of hypertension and their associated factors in southern China. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 5 cities of urban areas and 5 counties of rural areas in Southern China in 2013, a stratified multistage random sampling method was used to select a representative sample. Recruitment included a total of 19254 participants aged 15 or older. Socio-demographic profiles, examinations were administrated on each subject. Multilevel logistic regression models were used to identify the risk factors of hypertension, awareness, treatment, and control. Overall, the prevalence of hypertension and pre-hypertension are 24.59% and 32.11%, respectively in southern China. Among all the hypertensive patients, 67.43% were aware of their condition, 55.76% took anti-hypertension medication recent two weeks, and 30.79% had their blood pressure controlled. Compared with male, female hypertensive patients had higher rates of hypertension awareness, treatment and control. Age, gender, marital status, living areas, education, BMI, waist circumference, visceral adipose index (VAI), high body fat percentage (BFP) and family hypertension history correlated with the prevalence of hypertension. SBP/DBP increased with VAI and BFP increasing. There is an increasing prevalence of hypertension and high pre-hypertension in the general population in southern China, but levels of awareness, treatment, and control remain relatively low, especially for young and middle-aged population. Innovative strategies including of adopting appropriate anti-hypertensive medication therapy and healthy lifestyles should be taken.