Parents 'pass high blood pressure to sons'

Men are in danger of inheriting high blood pressure if their parents suffer from the condition, researchers warned yesterday.

Their study suggests that those with one or two parents with raised blood pressure are at a "significantly" increased risk.

If both parents were sufferers at a young age, the risk could be 20-fold higher of becoming a sufferer by the age of 35.

The findings are from a U.S. study involving only men and investigators said separate research was needed to determine if some women ran a similar risk.

Hypertension, the medical term, affects 16 million Britons and is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke and kidney failure.

It is associated with obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol levels.

In the study at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, 1,160 men filled out health questionnaires when students in 1947.

Then for the next 54 years, they completed annual questionnaires on their blood pressure and the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension in themselves and their parents.

At the beginning of the study, 264 (23 per cent) reported at least one parent with hypertension, including 20 with both.

In the following decades, 583 new cases of parental hypertension occurred, so that 60 per cent had at least one parent with high blood pressure and 14 per cent had two.

Men with one or two parents with hypertension had higher average blood pressure at the beginning of the study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

They were also more likely to develop hypertension during adulthood than those whose parents never had the condition.

Lead researcher Nae-Yuh Wang said: "Men with one or both parents who was hypertensive before the age of 55 had a much higher risk of developing high blood pressure, especially at a younger age.

"Early-onset hypertension in both parents was associated with a six-fold higher risk of hypertension at any point in adulthood and a 20-fold higher risk of developing hypertension by age 35."

The report advises doctors to ask patients about parental hypertension to identify those at high risk.

"The findings underscore the importance of primary prevention and blood-pressure monitoring early in life in men with parental hypertension," it said.

A high blood pressure reading is one that exceeds 140/90 millimetres of mercury.

The first figure - for systolic pressure - corresponds to the "surge" that occurs with each heartbeat.

The second - or diastolic - reading is the pressure between beats.