RESEARCH ARTICLE
Prevalence and Control of Hypertension in Iraqi Diabetic Patients: A Prospective Cohort Study
Abbas Ali Mansour*
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 68
Last Page: 71
Publisher ID: TOCMJ-6-68
DOI: 10.2174/1874192401206010068
Article History:
Received Date: 29/2/2012Revision Received Date: 21/3/2012
Acceptance Date: 11/4/2012
Electronic publication date: 18/5/2012
Collection year: 2012

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Objectives:
Diabetes and hypertension are major risk factors for cardiovascular disease, a leading cause of death in humans. The aim of our study was to determine the prevalence of hypertension, and hypertension control among adults with diabetes in Basrah (Southern Iraq).
Methods:
A prospective cohort study was conducted at Al-Faiha Diabetes and Endocrine Center in Basrah. It was started in August 2008 to April 2011. The total number of recruited patients with diabetes was 5578.
Results:
Hypertensive diabetic patients constituted 89.6% of this study cohort, with 45.3% of them newly discovered in the center. From hypertensive patients, 48.2% achieved the target blood pressure of less than 130/80 mmHg. The results of the multivariate analyses showed that the factors independently associated with the hypertension were aged > 50 years (odds ratio, 0.4; 95% CI, 0.3 to 0.5; p < 0.001), body mass index equal or more than 25 (odds ratio, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.4 to 0.6; p < 0.001), insulin use (odds ratio, 0.6; 95% CI, 0.5 to 0.8; p < 0.001) and duration of diabetes > 5 years (odds ratio, 0.6; 95% CI, 0.5 to 0.7; p < 0.001) .
Conclusion:
This study confirmed that hypertension was seen in ~90% of diabetic patients in Iraq, and approximately half of them were achieving target blood pressure level.