Lifestyle taking toll in rural areas too: study

It’s not just people in urban areas who are facing increasing levels of hypertension.

It’s not just people in urban areas who are facing increasing levels of hypertension. Dramatic changes in lifestyle and physical inactivity have had a telling effect on the rural populace as well.

Latest studies by the armed forces have shown that there is an increase in the prevalence of risk factors for hypertension among this group. Researchers from the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC) have in the January edition of the Medical Journal of Armed Forces of India, the official publication of Armed Forces Medical Services, noted that there was a paucity of data on the prevalence of hypertension and its determinants in rural India. Hence a cross-sectional study was taken up to determine the same among the rural population in Maharashtra.

Col R Bhalwar, Head of the Department of Community Medicine, AFMC, along with Lt Col V K Agrawal and D R Basannar, pointed out that the prevalence of systolic hypertension in the rural community was 18.5 per cent and of diastolic hypertension 15 per cent with higher prevalence in the age-group of 60 and above in the case of men and women.

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A random sample of 406 people (218 men and 188 women) of 30 years and above were selected from a rural area in Maharashtra. Medical tests were conducted by trained doctors like details of risk factors such as smoking, alcohol intake, physical inactivity, salt intake and others.

It was found that the prevalence of smoking and tobacco use was 16 per cent, alcohol intake 9 per cent while 34.2 per cent had a daily salt intake more than five grams and 47 per cent had a daily saturated fat intake of more than 10 per cent. A total of 18.5 per cent were ‘physically inactive’ (work and leisure) and 18 per cent had a body mass index of more than 25.

In this study they found that abdominal obesity and high incidence of saturated fat intake was found in women in the age-group 30-39 years while prevalence of alcohol use was higher in the age-group 40-49 years.

Again 18.5 per cent (more than 75 men and women) were suffering from systolic hypertension—more than 140 mg Hg and 15 per cent (more than 60) from diastolic hypertension (more than 90 mg Hg), Col Bhalwar said. Hypertension is one of the most important risk factors for coronary heart disease that is estimated to be the most common cause of death globally by 2020.

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Studies from India and Bangladesh have shown an increasing trend in the prevalence of hypertension, says Col Bhalwar and while prevalence of hypertension has increased by about 30 times among urban dwellers in a period of three to six decades, it has by about 10 times among rural inhabitants.