Estimation of Hypertension Risk from Lifestyle Factors and Health Profile: A Case Study

Hypertension is a highly prevalent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and it can also lead to other diseases which seriously harm the human health. Screening the risks and finding a clinical model for estimating the risk of onset, maintenance, or the prognosis of hypertension are of great importance to the prevention or treatment of the disease, especially if the indicator can be derived from simple health profile. In this study, we investigate a chronic disease questionnaire data set of 6563 rural citizens in East China and find out a clinical signature that can assess the risk of hypertension easily and accurately. The signature achieves an accuracy of about 83% on the external test dataset, with an AUC of 0.91. Our study demonstrates that a combination of simple lifestyle features can sufficiently reflect the risk of hypertension onset. This finding provides potential guidance for disease prevention and control as well as development of home care and home-care technologies.