Prevalence of hypertension in China: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis of trends and regional differences

Hypertension has become a growing public health concern in rapidly developing countries. We estimated trends of hypertension prevalence in adults in China over the past 10 years and identified demographical and geographical determinants of these trends. A systematic search was conducted for studies published between 2002 and 2012 using PubMed and China National Knowledge Infrastructure electronic databases. In total, 47 studies were selected out of 4512 hits. The age-standardized prevalence of hypertension increased by 1.4% per year. Hypertension prevalence in north China was 9.1% (95% confidence interval 4.1-14.1), which was higher than south China. After adjustments for survey year and region, the age-standardized prevalence of hypertension did not differ significantly between men and women (P = 0.18). Our findings suggest a significant increase in the prevalence of hypertension in China over the period of 2002-2012 with considerable regional differences within China.