Socioeconomic inequalities in prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of hypertension: Evidence

Amini et al. BMC Public Health (2022) 22:1401

https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13444-x

RESEARCH

Socioeconomic inequalities in prevalence,

awareness, treatment and control

of hypertension: evidence from the PERSIAN

cohort study

Mahin Amini1

, Mahdi Moradinazar1

, Fatemeh Rajati2

, Moslem Soof3

, Sadaf G. Sepanlou4

, Hossein Poustchi5

,

Sareh Eghtesad5

, Mahmood Moosazadeh6

, Javad Harooni7

, Javad Aghazadeh‑Attari8

, Majid Fallahi9

,

Mohammad Reza Fattahi10, Alireza Ansari‑Moghaddam11, Farhad Moradpour12, Azim Nejatizadeh13,

Mehdi Shahmoradi14, Fariborz Mansour‑Ghanaei15, Alireza Ostadrahimi16, Ali Ahmadi17, Arsalan Khaledifar17,

Mohammad Hossien Saghi9

, Nader Saki18, Iraj Mohebbi8

, Reza Homayounfar19, Mojtaba Farjam19,

Ali Esmaeili Nadimi20, Mahmood Kahnooji20, Farhad Pourfarzi21, Bijan Zamani21, Abbas Rezaianzadeh22,

Masoumeh Ghoddusi Johari23, Masoud Mirzaei24, Ali Dehghani25, Seyed Fazel Zinat Motlagh7

, Zahra Rahimi26,

Reza Malekzadeh27 and Farid Najaf28*

Abstract

Background: Elevated blood pressure is associated with cardiovascular disease, stroke and chronic kidney disease. In

this study, we examined the socioeconomic inequality and its related factors in prevalence, Awareness, Treatment and

Control (ATC) of hypertension (HTN) in Iran.

Method: The study used data from the recruitment phase of The Prospective Epidemiological Research Studies in

IrAN (PERSIAN). A sample of 162,842 adults aged> =35 years was analyzed. HTN was defned according to the Joint

National Committee)JNC-7(. socioeconomic inequality was measured using concentration index (Cn) and curve.

Results: The mean age of participants was 49.38(SD= ±9.14) years and 44.74% of the them were men. The

prevalence of HTN in the total population was 22.3%(95% CI: 20.6%; 24.1%), and 18.8%(95% CI: 16.8%; 20.9%) and

25.2%(95% CI: 24.2%; 27.7%) in men and women, respectively. The percentage of awareness treatment and control

among individuals with HTN were 77.5%(95% CI: 73.3%; 81.8%), 82.2%(95% CI: 70.2%; 81.6%) and 75.9%(95% CI: 70.2%;

81.6%), respectively. The Cn for prevalence of HTN was -0.084. Two factors, age (58.46%) and wealth (32.40%), contrib‑

uted most to the socioeconomic inequality in the prevalence of HTN.

Conclusion: The prevalence of HTN was higher among low-SES individuals, who also showed higher levels of aware‑

ness. However, treatment and control of HTN were more concentrated among those who had higher levels of SES,

indicating that people at a higher risk of adverse event related to HTN (the low SES individuals) are not benefting

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Open Access

*Correspondence: [email protected]

28 Department of Epidemiology, School of Health, Research Center

for Environmental Determinants of Health, Research Institute for Health,

Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran

Full list of author information is available at the end of the article