Hypertension and cigarette smoking: a case-control study of hypertension patients in Yerevan

Abstract

Hypertension cause over half of all death in the world and at the end of the twenty century hypertension is supposed to pose as a national health problems all over the world. In Armenia the mortality rate from hypertension rose from 52.8 out of 278.065 per 100000 population for all cardiovascular diseases to the 73.45 out of 351.17 per 100000 over the last ten years. If hypertension untreated, about 50 percent of patients die of coronary heart disease, about 33 percent of stroke, and 15 percent of renal failure. Commonly the role of hypertension is underestimated in causing the underlying vascular damage that leads to cardiovascular catastrophes. The death is usually attributed to stroke or infarction instead of hypertension which in fact is largely responsible. Besides, hypertension may not persist after a myocardial infarction or stroke. The immediate purpose of the present investigation is to reveal the strength of association between cigarette smoking and hypertension among men in Armenian. The obtained results show that there is no positive association between cigarette smoking and hypertension.. However it appears that former smokers are more prone to develop y hypertension. The finding regarding the number of cigarettes shows that if one smokes more than 15 cigarettes per day he has an 1.2 times more risk to develop hypertension than those who smoke less than 15 cigarettes per day. It is also interesting to mention family history on smoking and hypertension, because the association is negative and there is no any research in literature regarding that. However, it can be expected that further research will develop stronger association between cigarette smoking and hypertension in terms of statistic significance. It has been found that physical exercise has a negative impact on hypertension development. It can also be analyzed from another point of view, because physical exercises are recommended for cardiovascular disease protection as a healthy lifestyle. It is obtained that especially morning running about 30 minutes more than 4 times a week shows a protective trend toward hypertension development. Regarding weight, it could be said that though the results are not statistically significant, they are correlated with data stated in literature. The blood pressure increases with weight gain and decreases with weight loss. However, there is no any specific data on factors that can be responsible for that change in blood pressure. In the present article it is obtained that weight over 65 kg can be a predictor for hypertension. It is worth mentioning that there is another interesting finding regarding alcohol consumption. According to literature, there are controversial ideas. The findings of present study correlate with ideas according to which drinking more than 250g per week can decrease the blood pressure, whereas the drinking of less than 250g can lead to some increase of blood pressure.