Trends in the Prevalence, Awareness, Treatment, and Control of Hypertension in Nepal between 2000 and 2025: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Understanding the burden and trend of hypertension and the associated care cascade can provide direction to the development of interventions preventing and controlling hypertension. This study aimed to assess prevalence and trends of hypertension and its awareness, treatment, and control in Nepal. METHODS: We systematically searched CINAHL, Embase, ProQuest, PubMed, Web of Science, WorldCat, and government and health agency-owned websites to identify studies reporting prevalence of hypertension, awareness, treatment, and control in Nepal between 2000 and 2020. We applied the random-effects model to compute the pooled prevalence in the overall population and among subgroups in each 5-year interval period between 2000 and 2020. We used linear meta-regression analysis to predict hypertension from 2000 to 2025. RESULTS: We identified 23 studies having a total of 84,006 participants. The pooled prevalence of hypertension, awareness, treatment, and control for 2016–2020 was 32% (95% CI: 23–40%), 50% (95% CI: 30–69%), 27% (95% CI: 19–34%), and 38% (95% CI: 28–48%), respectively. The prevalence of hypertension varied by age, gender, education, and geographical area. Hypertension increased by 6 percentage points (pp), awareness increased by 12 pp, treatment increased by 11 pp, and control increased by 3 pp over the 20 years studied. Since 2000, the rate of increment of hypertension has been 3.5 pp per decade, where 44.7% of men are expected to suffer from hypertension by 2025. CONCLUSION: The markedly increased prevalence of hypertension and relatively poor progress in hypertension awareness, treatment, and control in Nepal suggest that there is a need for hypertension preventive approaches as well as strategies to optimize hypertension care cascade.