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Risk factors of hypertension in acclimatized lowlanders staying at different altitudes

Journal of Human Hypertension volume 34, pages 802–803 (2020)Cite this article

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I read with great interest the extremely informative and well-performed paper published in a issue of this Journal by Vashishtha et al. entitled “Prevalence and risk factors of hypertension in acclimatized lowlanders staying at high altitude for different durations” [1], demonstrating that odds of having hypertension vary independently with different determinants across different groups. In their study, variables like sex, obesity, lifestyle disorders, old age, and socio-economic status which are known to independently influence the blood pressure irrespective of the geographical conditions were normalized and matched to minimize the positive biasness on prevalence of hypertension at high-altitude.

Although various potential confounders have been considered in their study, the influence of temperature and atmospheric pressure have not. However, it is well known that as the temperature falls blood vessels constrict, which leads to increased resistance in peripheral circulation and an increase in blood pressure [2,3,4,5]. In addition, a significant inverse relationship between atmospheric pressure and blood pressure during the spring days and during winter nights was observed in some studies [6,7,8]. Therefore, temperature and atmospheric pressure should be controlled for studies in which blood pressure is measured. We are surprised that these potentially important confounders have not been considered, despite the known change in temperature and atmospheric pressure with increasing altitude and time.

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References

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  1. Department of Cardiology, The Fifth People’s Hospital of Dongguan (also called Taiping People’s Hospital of Dongguan), The Dongguan Affiliated Hospital of Medical College of Jinan University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China

    GuanYang Kang

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Correspondence to GuanYang Kang.

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Kang, G. Risk factors of hypertension in acclimatized lowlanders staying at different altitudes. J Hum Hypertens 34, 802–803 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41371-019-0262-3

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