A new study reveals that several people diagnosed with hypertension in four of the world’s biggest middle-income countries stop treatment and most of these patients lose control of blood pressure, potentially leading to heart problems and death. Researchers analysed patient data from China, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Africa, experts found that policies solely aimed at improving diagnosis or initiating treatment may not lead to long-term hypertension control improvements in these and similar countries.
Researchers investigating how people with hypertension move through care over time looked at adults aged 40 and over. They discovered that over a 5- to 9-year follow-up period, only around 30 per cent of undiagnosed individuals became diagnosed, whilst 25 per cent of untreated individuals became treated. The most striking finding, however, was that among those that were on treatment and had controlled blood pressure, the majority lost blood pressure control and a substantial number stopped treatment over the 5- to -9-year period.
Publishing their findings in Science Translational Medicine, the international group of researchers – including the University of Birmingham and the Technical University of Munich – observed that: South Africa had the lowest rates of undiagnosed hypertension, treatment discontinuation and blood pressure control loss, as well as the highest probabilities of individuals reaching blood pressure control.
China had one of the lowest rates of reaching blood pressure control with just 9 per cent of individuals likely to achieve this – regardless of treatment status. In Indonesia, 92 per cent of individuals lost blood pressure control at follow-up, with the country also displaying the highest treatment discontinuation and lowest treatment initiation rates - suggesting substantial barriers in accessing and following up care.
In Mexico, only 27 per cent of people were likely to be diagnosed with hypertension, whilst 34 per cent of individuals with a diagnosis later discontinued their treatment. Professor Justine Davies from the University of Birmingham commented: “Hypertension affects one in four adults and is the world’s leading cause of cardiovascular disease and early death.
Two-thirds of people with hypertension live in low- and middle-income countries and these countries in particular face considerable population ageing, which is likely to generate a surge in people requiring hypertension care.
Treating hypertension substantially reduces deaths from cardiovascular disease mortality, yet many countries have crucial gaps in hypertension diagnosis and control.” Nikkil Sudharsanan, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science for Disease Prevention and Health Care at the Technical University of Munich, commented: “Our analysis covered four large middle-income countries making up close to a quarter of the world’s population. We found that diagnosis and treatment initiation are major bottlenecks to achieving blood pressure control. Nonetheless, treatment discontinuation and loss of blood pressure control are equally problematic and reveal that we can’t expect long-term hypertension control from interventions that seek to improve diagnosis and treatment initiation without efforts to also keep people in care and their blood pressure controlled over time.”
