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Aiden L Kenny, John W McEvoy, Updated Prevalence of Hypertension Subtypes in American Adults, With Implications for Treating Isolated Systolic Hypertension, American Journal of Hypertension, Volume 38, Issue 5, May 2025, Pages 269–271, https://doi.org/10.1093/ajh/hpaf018
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Hypertension remains a pervasive healthcare challenge and a leading cause of disability-adjusted life years globally.1 The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) has provided invaluable data on the health trends of the American population since the early 1960s and has contributed greatly to our understanding of hypertension.2 For example, in a series of classic papers, NHANES investigators,2–5 amongst others,6,7 demonstrated how blood pressure (BP) changes as a function of age in Western populations. Specifically, average systolic BP tends to increase constantly with age, whereas average diastolic BP generally increases up to the fifth decade and thereafter declines.3 This pattern results in a high prevalence of isolated systolic hypertension (ISH) in older adults with hypertension.5,7 In the 1990s data from NHANES III, reported by Franklin et al., prevalences of ISH by age category were found to increase from approximately 20% among American adults aged < 50 years, to 50% among adults aged 50-59 years, and over 80% among adults 60 years or older.5 Of note, one major advantage of NHANES data is that they are representative of the American population.
