Prevalence and predictors of high blood pressure among postmenopausal women in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, there is limited evidence on prevalence of high blood pressure (HBP) and its risk factors among postmenopausal women (PMW). Due to this lack of data, our objective was to evaluate HBP and its predictors among PMW through a secondary analysis of nationally representative data from the Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey 2017–2018. It was a cross-sectional survey that used a two-stage stratified cluster sampling technique to recruit participants. The survey measured biomarkers for one-quarter of the respondents. Thus, a total of 648 PMW were included for analysis based on inclusion criteria and eligibility for BP and blood glucose measurement. The outcome variable of this study was high BP in terms of pre-hypertension (pre-HTN) and hypertension (HTN). The predictor variables were sociodemographic factors, reproductive factors, barriers to accessing health care, self-screening, and metabolic factors. The mean age of the PMW was 42.2 years (standard error ± 0.26). The overall prevalence of high BP was 71.9%, pre-HTN was 33.7% and HTN was 38.2% among PMW. High BP (pre-HTN and HTN) was prevalent among PMW who were married (pre-HTN = 90.1%, HTN = 89.4%, total = 89.8%), living in an urban area (pre-HTN = 74.5%, HTN = 72.6%, total = 74.6%), aged ≥ 40 years (pre-HTN = 64.5%, HTN = 75.6%, total = 69.1%), and overweight / obese (pre-HTN = 49.3%, HTN = 67.0%, total = 58.2%). Adjusted logistic regression identified overweight/obesity (OR: 2.67, CI 1.74–4.08, P<0.001) as the only predictor of high BP for PMW in Bangladesh. These findings demand that PMW of Bangladesh be integrated into national hypertension screening strategies to prevent high BP-related cardiovascular mortality.