Awareness about high blood pressure and how to control it is on the decline, after 15 years of trending up, a new National Institutes of Health study shows.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined data for 18,262 U.S. adults with high blood pressure. Researchers gathered the data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between 1999 and 2018.
The study found that in 1999-2000, 70 percent of survey participants were aware of having high blood pressure. That number increased to 85 percent in 2013-14, but then declined to 77 percent in 2017-18.
Among those who were aware of their condition, 85 percent said they were taking blood pressure medications in 1999-2000. That figure jumped to 89 percent in 2013-14, and then dropped slightly to 88 percent in 2017-18.
Of those with high blood pressure, the number who managed to control their condition increased from 32 percent in 1999-2000 to 54 percent in 2013-14, before dropping to 44 percent in 2017-18.
"Reversing this decline is important because we don't want to lose public health achievements built over prior decades," said study co-author Lawrence Fine, MD, chief of the clinical applications and prevention branch at National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.