BALTIMORE, March 26 (UPI) -- Children with one or both parents with hypertension may be at an increased risk of developing elevated blood pressure as adults, U.S. researchers said.
Nae-Yuh Wang and colleagues at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore assessed hypertension in 1,160 men who first filled out study questionnaires on their medical history and dietary habits in 1947 -- when they were medical students.
For each year of the 54-year follow-up, the doctors completed annual questionnaires.
At the beginning of the study, 23 percent of the medical students reported at least one parent with hypertension, including 20 with both parents who had hypertension.
The study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that during the follow-up, 583 new cases of parental hypertension occurred, so that 701, or 60 percent, of the group had at least one parent with high blood pressure and 166, or 14 percent, had two.
"Men with both parents with hypertension or one parent who was hypertensive before the age of 55 years had a much higher risk of developing hypertension," the study authors said in a statement. "Early-onset hypertension in both parents was associated with a 6.2-fold higher risk of hypertension at any point in adulthood and a 20-fold higher risk of developing hypertension by age 35."
