Jalal Poorolajal
Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Title: How much excess weight loss can reduce the risk of hypertension
Biography
Biography: Jalal Poorolajal
Abstract
A 25% relative reduction in the prevalence of hypertension is a global target for the prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases. We conducted this meta-analysis to estimate the effect of excess weight loss on hypertension. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and reference lists of articles to January 2016. We included prospective cohort studies addressing the association between overweight and obesity and hypertension. We expressed the strength of association between overweight and obesity and hypertension using risk ratio and the excess risk of hypertension attributable to overweight and obesity using attributable risk fraction with 95% confidence intervals (CI) based on the random-effects model. We found a total of 7617 references and included 10 studies with 173,828 participants. Compared to normal weight, the risk ratio of hypertension was 1.52 (95% CI: 1.37, 1.67; 9 studies, I2=82.4%) for overweight and 2.17 (95% CI: 1.84, 2.50; 9 studies, I2=88.9%) for obesity. The excess risk of hypertension attributable to overweight was 32% (95% CI: 24%, 40%; 8 studies, I2=85.5%) and that attributable to obesity was 47% (95% CI: 40%, 54%; 8 studies, I2=88.2%). That means, excess weight loss may reduce the risk of hypertension from 24% to 40% in people who are overweight and from 40% to 54% in people who are obese. No evidence of publication bias was detected. Excess weight loss is effective in a relative reduction in the incidence of hypertension and is sufficient for achieving the global target and requires to be accompanied with other preventive measures.