Major burden of disease worldwide:

Suboptimal blood pressure among the ten leading risk factors

According to the recently published WHO World Health Report suboptimal blood pressure levels (systolic >115 mmHg) are among the ten leading risk factors for lost years of life – this was found to be true for all subregions of the world: high mortality developing countries, low mortality developing countries and developed countries. It was estimated that 7.1 million deaths worldwide are caused by high blood pressure; that is 13% of the total deaths. Because most of these deaths occur in middle or old age the loss of life years comprises a smaller proportion of the global total than expected from the incidence.

In order to describe the burden of disease WHO used the Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY), a measure of burden of disease in a population by combining Years of Life Lost and Years Lived with Disability. In developing countries with high mortality rates, high blood pressure was found to be responsible for 2% of the DALYs. Five percent of the DALYs were attributed to high blood pressure in low mortality developing countries. In developed countries, this figure reached almost 11%. The graphic below further illustrates the burden of disease attributable to high blood pressure.

Anja Kroke

Editor

WHL Newsletter dec/2003