Document Type
Article
Abstract
Background
Previous studies that investigated association of height with prevalence and control of hypertension found mixed results. This cross-sectional study explored these associations among US adults (≥20 years).
Methods
The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2007–18 data was analyzed. Height was measured in meters and was converted into centimeters (cm) and was further divided into quartiles: Q1 (135.3–159.2 cm), Q2 (159.3–166.2 cm), Q3 (166.3–173.6 cm), Q4 (173.7–204.5 cm). Hypertension definition of the ‘2017 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guideline’ was used. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to find out the association between the dependent variable and the covariates. Linear regression analyses were conducted to find out the association of height with systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), pulse pressure (PP), and the covariates among the individuals who were not taking any antihypertensive drugs. Crude odds ratio, adjusted odds ratio (AOR), and adjusted beta-coefficient (for linear regression) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were reported. The following covariates were included: age, gender, race/ethnicity, family income, education level, cholesterol level, high-density lipoprotein level, chronic kidney disease status, diabetes status, smoker, aerobic leisure-time physical activity, and survey period. Sample weight of NHANES was adjusted.
Results
Among the 21,935 participants (47.1% males), the prevalence of hypertension was 46.1%. Among 6154 participants taking medication (43.0% males), 57.2% had uncontrolled hypertension. In the final logistic regression analyses, participants in Q2 height quartile had 20% lower odds of being hypertensive compared to those in Q4 height quartile (AOR: 0.8; 95% CI: 0.7,1.0). Other height categories did not reveal any significant association. Compared to Q4 height category, Q1 (AOR: 1.7; 95% CI: 1.2,2.3), Q2 (AOR: 1.4; 95% CI: 1.1,1.8), and Q3 (AOR: 1.3; 95% CI: 1.1,1.6) height categories had higher odds of uncontrolled hypertension. PP was inversely associated and DBP was positively associated with height.
Conclusions
Although height was not associated with prevalence of hypertension, it had inverse association with uncontrolled hypertension. It was also significantly associated with DBP and PP among the individuals with untreated hypertension.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Clinical Hypertension, Volume 27, 2021.
© The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
APA Citation
Gupta, R. D., Akonde, M., Sajal, I. H., & Al Kibria, G. M. (2021). Association between height and hypertension among US adults: analyses of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007–18. Clinical Hypertension, 27. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40885-021-00164-4