If your parents were diagnosed with high blood pressure before age 55, you may be at higher risk for developing high blood pressure.

‘A person’s risk of developing high blood pressure increases, if the parents were diagnosed with high blood pressure before age 55.’

Of the offspring
studied: group one had no parents with high blood pressure; group two had
one or more parents with late-onset hypertension, meaning they were
diagnosed at age 55 or older; group three had one parent with early-onset
high blood pressure; and group four had both parents with early-onset
hypertension. They found:




- The offspring who were most likely to develop hypertension were those whose mother and father had early-onset hypertension.
- When individuals with non-hypertensive parents, group one, were followed for a decade, 6% of them developed high blood pressure. This portion in group two was 8%; in group three it was 11%; and in group four, where both parents had early-onset hypertension, it was 19%.
- The offspring’s high blood pressure risk increased by about 50% from group one to group two. And from group one to group four, offspring with both parents having early-onset hypertension had 3.5 times the risk of hypertension compared to offspring whose parents had normal blood pressure.
Finally, the researchers found that the earlier in life the parents developed hypertension, the earlier their offspring did also. It may be important to differentiate between early- and late-onset parental hypertension when estimating an individual’s hypertension risk, researchers said.
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