ObjectiveTo explore the regional and urban-rural disparities in the hypertension incidence of Chinese adults. MethodsBased on the data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), as well as the consumption level and altitude data from the National Bureau of Statistics and government official website, a robust multilevel Poisson regression was performed to explore the regional and urban-rural disparities in the hypertension incidence of Chinese adults, according to data and design types. ResultsAccording to the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 11 579 subjects and totaling 50 957 lines of data were enrolled. The 24 years follow-up results indicated that the crude incidence density of hypertension was 37.08/1 000 person years, with 40.51/1 000 person years for males and 34.13/1 000 person years for females. The robust multilevel Poisson regression results indicated that, by adjusting the high-level factors such as time, the proportion of the community mainly engaged in agricultural labor, and the consumption level of subjects, as well as sociodemographic characteristics such as age and gender, the Middle (RR=1.20, 95%CI 1.04 to 1.39), Northeast (RR=1.25, 95%CI 1.03 to 1.52), and Eastern (RR=1.25, 95%CI 1.05 to 1.48) China had a higher risk of developing hypertension than the Western China. The risk of hypertension in urban area was lower than that in rural area (RR=0.87, 95%CI 0.77 to 0.96). ConclusionThe incidence density of hypertension in China is relatively high, and male is higher than female. The incidence of hypertension in the Western China is lower than that in the Middle, Northeast and Eastern China, and urban area is lower than rural area.
Hypertension and its associated cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and ischemic heart disease result in a high burden of disease and health losses, making it the most burdensome disease in the world and one of the important public health issues in China. Currently Chinese scholars have carried out a large number of studies on the prevalence of hypertension, including regional and national prevalence studies. However, long-term follow-up studies on incidence of hypertension are relatively few and mostly limited to specific ages and regions. This paper summarizes the prevalence, incidence and epidemiological trend of hypertension in Chinese adults. The hypertension prevalence increased from 5.1% in 1959 to 27.5% in 2018, and presents an overall trend of high in the north and low in the south. The hypertension incidence is at a high level (the cumulative incidence was 33.4% after 22 years-follow-up), but there are few researches on the trend of hypertension incidence in huge region.