High Blood Pressure, the New HIV Epidemic?

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – HIV has long been considered an epidemic, but some experts are warning that high blood pressure could be just as disastrous to global health as HIV. Although high blood pressure, or hypertension, is not infectious, it can lead to fatal illness just as HIV can. Researchers say that the number of deaths attributable to hypertension globally over the next 20 years may greatly surpass the number resulting from HIV/AIDS.

The risky behaviors associated with hypertension are spreading rapidly and seem to be effectively transmitted as infectious agents, according to researchers.

“HIV was faced with political denial and pubic misunderstanding in the early years of the pandemic…there is a similar pattern of denial with hypertension,” Prof Peter Lloyd-Sherlock from the University of East Anglia (UEA), Prof Shah Ebrahim and Prof Heiner Grosskurth of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), was quoted as saying.

For more information, please go to:http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2014/February/hypertension-epidemic-HIV

SOURCE: International Journal of Epidemiology, February 2014