Health Hazards: Blood pressure on the rise during Covid pandemic

On Monday, scientists reported that blood pressure measurements of nearly a half-million adults showed a significant rise last year, compared with the previous year. These measurements describe the pressure of blood against the walls of the arteries. 

Over time, increased pressure can damage the heart, the brain, blood vessels, kidneys and eyes. Sexual function can also be affected.

“These are very important data that are not surprising, but are shocking,” said Dr. Donald M. Lloyd-Jones, president of the American Heart Association, who was not involved in the study. 

“Even small changes in average blood pressure in the population,” he added, “can have a huge impact on the number of strokes, heart failure events and heart attacks that we’re likely to be seeing in the coming months.” 

The study, published as a research letter in the journal Circulation, is a stark reminder that even in the midst of a pandemic that has claimed more than 785,000 American lives and disrupted access to health care, chronic health conditions must still be managed. 

Almost half of all American adults have hypertension, or high blood pressure, a chronic condition referred to as a “silent killer” because it can have life-threatening consequences, though it produces few symptoms.

Hypertension may also put people at greater risk for severe disease if they are infected with the coronavirus. (The evidence for that link is mixed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) The new study, by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and Quest Diagnostics, examined data from hundreds of thousands of employees and family members in wellness programs that tracked blood pressure and other health indicators, like weight. The participants, from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, included people who had elevated blood pressure and normal blood pressure at the start of the study. “We observed that people weren’t exercising as much during the pandemic, weren’t getting regular care, were drinking more and sleeping less,” said Dr. Luke Laffin, the lead author, a preventive cardiologist who is co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic. “We wanted to know, was their blood pressure changing during the pandemic?” The researchers found that blood pressure readings changed little from 2019 to the first three months of 2020, but increased significantly from April 2020 through December 2020, compared with the same period in 2019. Blood pressure is measured in units of millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) and consists of two numbers. The first number refers to systolic pressure as the heart contracts, and the second number refers to diastolic pressure as the heart rests between beats. Normal blood pressure is said to be 120/80 mm Hg or less, although there is decades-long dispute about the optimal levels.

The new study found that the average monthly change from April 2020 to December 2020, compared with the previous year, was 1.10 mm Hg to 2.50 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure, and 0.14 to 0.53 for diastolic blood pressure. The increases held true for both men and women, and in all age groups. Larger increases in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure were seen in women.

The average age of the study participants was just over 45, and slightly more than half were women. But critics said the failure to include information on the race and the ethnicity of participants was a significant weakness in the study, as hypertension is much more prevalent among Black Americans than among white or Hispanic Americans.