Do you have high blood pressure? Your spouse might too, study finds

Married couples have more than just shared habits, traditions, and interests. If one partner suffers from hypertension, the other is more likely to have the condition, new research suggests.

Do you suffer from high blood pressure? Most likely, your spouse has the same problem. This is the conclusion of the new study, the results of which were published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

After analyzing the medical records of middle-aged and elderly married couples, researchers have found that in 20 to 47 percent of cases, both partners had high blood pressure, reports Euronews.

The multinational study was carried out in the US, England, China, and India.

“Many people know that high blood pressure is common in middle-aged and older adults, yet we were surprised to find that among many older couples, both husband and wife had high blood pressure in the US, England, China and India,” senior author Chihua Li, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan in the US, said in a statement.

“For instance, in the US, among more than 35 percent of couples who were ages 50 or older, both had high blood pressure.”

The study included 3,989 US couples, 1,086 English couples, 6,514 Chinese couples, and 22,389 Indian couples.

The prevalence of both partners in England having high blood pressure was 47 percent. In the US, it was 38 percent, while in China it was 21 percent, and in India—20 percent.

Wives whose husbands had high blood pressure were 26 percent more likely in China to also have it compared to those married to people without high blood pressure.

In India, wives whose husbands had high blood pressure were 19 percent more likely to also have it, while in the US and England, they were 9 percent more likely. There were similar associations for husbands.

“High blood pressure is more common in the US and England than in China and India, however, the association between couples’ blood pressure status was stronger in China and India than in the US and England,” Peiyi Lu, a post-doctoral fellow in epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, said in a statement.

“One reason might be cultural. In China and India, there’s a strong belief in sticking together as a family, so couples might influence each other’s health more”.

Limitations of the study included that it included only one blood pressure measurement for participants and that it only looked at heterosexual couples.

The authors said that this study shows the potential for couple-based treatments of hypertension.

According to the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat, 22 percent of people in member states have high blood pressure.

Studies have shown that high blood pressure is one of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular diseases including heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

Follow NEWS.am Medicine on Facebook and Twitter