Ethnic differences in prevalence and risk factors for hypertension in the Suriname Health Study: a cross sectional population study

Krishnadath et al. Population Health Metrics (2016) 14:33 DOI 10.1186/s12963-016-0102-4 RESEARCH Open Access Ethnic differences in prevalence and risk factors for hypertension in the Suriname Health Study: a cross sectional population study Ingrid S. K. Krishnadath1*, Vincent W. V. Jaddoe3,4, Lenny M. Nahar-van Venrooij1 and Jerry R. Toelsie2 Abstract Background: Limited information is available about the prevalence, ethnic disparities, and risk factors of hypertension within developing countries. We used data from a nationwide study on non-communicable disease (NCD) risk factors to estimate, explore, and compare the prevalence of hypertension overall and in subgroups of risk factors among different ethnic groups in Suriname. Method: The Suriname Health Study used the World Health Organization Steps design to select respondents with a stratified multistage cluster sample of households. The overall and ethnic specific prevalences of hypertension were calculated in general and in subgroups of sex, age, marital status, educational level, income status, employment, smoking status, residence, physical activity, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference (WC). Differences in the prevalence between ethnic subgroups were assessed using the Chi-square test. We used several adjustment models to explore whether the observed ethnic differences were explained by biological, demographic, lifestyle, or anthropometric risk factors. Results: The prevalence of hypertension was 26.2 % (95 % confidence interval 25.1 %-27.4 %). Men had higher mean values for systolic and diastolic blood pressure compared to women. Blood pressure increased with age. The prevalence was highest for Creole, Hindustani, and Javanese and lowest for Amerindians, Mixed, and Maroons. Differences between ethnic groups were measured in the prevalence of hypertension in subcategories of sex, marital status, education, income, smoking, physical activity, and BMI. The major difference in association of ethnic groups with hypertension was between Hindustani and Amerindians. Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension in Suriname was in the range of developing countries. The highest prevalence was found in Creoles, Hindustani, and Javanese. Differences in the prevalence of hypertension were observed between ethnic subgroups with biological, demographic, lifestyle, and anthropometric risk factors. These findings emphasize the need for ethnic-specific research and prevention and intervention programs. Keywords: Amerindian, Ethnicity, Hypertension, Risk factors, Suriname * Correspondence: 1 Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo, Suriname Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2016 The Author(s). Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Krishnadath et al. Population Health Metrics (2016) 14:33 Background Hypertension is the fourth-largest contributor to premature death in industrialized countries and the seventh in developing countries [1–3]. The increasing prevalence of hypertension in developing countries could be the result of factors like urbanization, population aging, unhealthy dietary habits, and social stress [4]. In several industrialized countries, ethnic differences in the prevalence of hypertension and its risk factors have been described extensively [5–17]. In contrast, in developing countries less research has been conducted. Studies reported higher prevalence of hypertension among adults from African descent followed by those of Asian or Hispanic descent, as compared to Caucasians [7–9, 18–20]. The Republic of Suriname, located on the northeast of South America, is an upper-middle income country with a multi-ethnic and multicultural population, with inhabitants of mainly Indian, African, and Indonesian descent. In this country, cardiovascular disease has been the main cause of mortality for decades in each ethnic group [21]. However, information about the prevalence and risk factors of hypertension among these different groups is limited. So far, a study from 2001, limited to three coastal districts, reported a hypertension prevalence of 33 % in adults between the ages of 18-55 years [22]. Of all participants, 70 % were physically inactive, 30 % smoked, 20 % were obese, and 15 % had high total cholesterol levels. In adults, the highest prevalence of hypertension has been observed in Creoles [22]. In adolescents, hypertension was measured more frequently in Hindustani and Javanese [23]. We used data from a nationwide study on noncommunicable disease (NCD) risk factors [24], to estimate, explore, and compare the prevalence of hypertension overall and in subgroups of biological, demographic, lifestyle, and anthropometric risk factors among different ethnic groups in Suriname. Methods Design We used data from the Suriname Health Study, the first nationwide study on NCD risk factors [24], which was designed according to World Health Organization (WHO) Steps guidelines [25]. The Ethics Committee of the Ministry of Health in Suriname (Commissie mensgebonden wetenschappelijk onderzoek (ref: VG 004-2013)) approved this research. Suriname has approximately 550,000 inhabitants, categorized into 15.7 % Creole (descendants of African plantation slaves), 27.4 % Hindustani (people of Indian heritage), 13.7 % Javanese (descendants from Indonesians), 21.7 % Maroon (descendants of African refugees who escaped slavery and formed independent settlements in the hinterland), 13.4 % mixed, 7.6 % others, including Amerindians Page 2 of 11 (original inhabitants), and 0.6 % unknown [26]. Because of financial restraints and the extended survey area in Suriname we used a stratified multistage cluster sample of households to select respondents between March and September 2013 for this study [24]. The strata were based on the geographic location of the sampling units in the various districts. The Primary Sampling Unit (PSU) of the sampling frame consists of the 10 districts of Suriname. The Secondary Sampling Units (SSU) consisted of 101 randomly selected enumeration areas (EAs) in nine districts and four randomly selected village areas in a remote tenth district, Sipaliwini. The SSU was divided into 343 clusters, which were selected randomly within the enumeration areas. Except for the 16 clusters in district Sipaliwini, each cluster contained 25 households. The clusters in Sipaliwini con (...truncated)