Cross-sectional analysis of obesity and high blood pressure among undergraduate students of a university medical college in South India

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of obesity and high blood pressure among undergraduate students of a university medical college. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted at a medical college among 434 medical students. A questionnaire was used to collect basic demographic details, followed by anthropometric measurements. Body mass index (BMI) was classified according to the World Health Organization classification. Blood pressure was measured with a standard mercury sphygmomanometer and classified according to the seventh report of the Joint National Committee (JNC VII) on prevention, detection, evaluation, and treatment of high blood pressure. Data were entered into and analyzed with SPSS version 15.0. Results: Nearly 65.0% of students had normal BMI, 9.9% were underweight, 17.9% were overweight, and 7.6% were obese. Obesity was more prevalent among males than among females on the basis of anthropometric variables such as BMI, waist-hip ratio, and waist-stature ratio, and this difference was found to be statistically significant. Blood pressure was in the normal range among 55.0% of the students, 36.6% had blood pressure in the prehypertensive range, 7.6% had blood pressure in the stage 1 category of the JNC VII criteria, and 0.5% had blood pressure in the stage 2 category of the JNC VII criteria. Among the students who had blood pressure greater than 140/90 mm Hg, 63.0% were males and 37.0% were females, and this difference was statistically significant. Conclusion: The prevalence of obesity was 7.6% and that of high blood pressure was 8.1% among the medical students, which were higher than those reported in the literature for the same age group and warrant further evaluation

India Hypertension Control Initiative—Hypertension treatment and blood pressure control in a cohort in 24 sentinel site clinics

Abstract The India Hypertension Control Initiative (IHCI) is a multi‐partner initiative, implementing and scaling up a public health hypertension control program across India. A cohort of 21,895 adult hypertension patients in 24 IHCI sentinel site facilities in four Indian states (Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Telangana), registered from January 2018 until June 2019 were assessed at baseline and then followed up for blood pressure (BP) control and antihypertensive medication use. Among all registrations, 11 274 (51%) of the patients returned for a follow‐up visit between July 2019 and September 2019. Among patients returning for follow‐up, 26.3% had BP controlled at registration, and 59.8% had BP controlled at follow‐up (p < .001). The absolute improvement in BP control was more than two times greater in primary care (48.1 percentage point increase) than secondary care facilities (22.9 percentage point increase). Most IHCI patients received prescriptions according to state‐specific treatment protocols. This study demonstrates that a scalable public health hypertension control program can yield substantial BP control improvements, especially in primary care settings. However, high loss to follow‐up limits population health impact; future efforts should focus on improving systems to increase the likelihood that patients will return to the clinic for routine hypertension care