High blood pressure to become a global health problem

&to=http:// english.pravda.ru/region/2002/06/11/30151.html ' target=_blank>Hypertension will become a paramount global health problem by 2025, according to a study which predicts that 20 years from now the proportion of adults with high blood pressure will rise from one in four to one in three.

The research, published on Saturday in the British medical weekly The Lancet, is an overview of 30 studies, published over 13 years, which looked at blood pressure in the population of dozens of countries.

In 2000, according to the investigators, the total number of adults with &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/fun/2002/08/12/34262_.html ' target=_blank>high blood pressure was 972 million, comprising 333 million in rich countries and 639 million in developing nations, wrote the Turkish Press.

"By 2025 we project that the number of adults with hypertension will be 1.56 billion," Dr Jiang He, of Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, was quoted as saying by Reuters.