Prevalence trends of hypertension among 9–17 aged children and adolescents in Yunnan, 2017–2019: a serial cross-sectional surveillance survey

BACKGROUND: We aim to describe the prevalence and trends of hypertension among 9–17 school-aged students from 2017 to 2019 in Yunnan, China. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study by using data from the Students’ Health Surveillance Surveys of 2017, 2018 and 2019 in Yunnan. The Students’ Health Surveillance Surveys in Yunnan collected date on physical fitness and health status of students in Yunnan through multistage-stratified sampling in 3 prefectures. In each prefecture, the study population were classified by gender and region (urban or rural), and each group had an equal size. Diagnosing criteria of hypertension was set with reference to Chinese age-specific and height-specific blood pressure (BP), to identify the abnormal status of boys and girls separately. ANOVA test was adopted to measure the differences in the mean BP stratified by gender, age, prefecture and area, and Chi-square test was used to compare the percentages of hypertension in different areas. For comparability, the age-standard and gender-standard population prevalence was calculated by directly using China Census in 2010 as a standard population. Totally 24,890 participants aged 9–17 years were included in this study. RESULTS: From 2017 to 2019, there were 24,872 students completed physical examinations and included in the analysis, of which 3288 were diagnosed with hypertension. The total prevalence of hypertension was 13.72, 12.49 and 13.45% among 9–17 years school-aged population in Yunnan, respectively. The total age-standardized hypertension prevalence trended to decrease from 13.82 to 13.48%. For urban population, the age-standardized hypertension prevalence decreased slightly from 11.24 to 10.13%. While, for rural population, it increased from 17.58 to 19.16%. The average annual growth rate in rural population was 0.53%. CONCLUSIONS: From 2017to 2019, there was a significant and continuous increase in the prevalence of hypertension in 9–17 years school-aged population in Yunnan. Hypertension is epidemic among children and adolescents in Yunnan. We should take effective and comprehensive intervention measures to reduce its prevalence among school-aged children.