Relationship between inflammatory cells level and longer duration of hypertension in Chinese community residents

ABSTRACT

Background

To explore the relationship between duration of hypertension and inflammatory cell levels and to assess whether long duration might aggravate these inflammatory cells among Chinese urban community residents.

Methods

A cross-sectional study of 5199 hypertensive and 2675 no-hypertensive participants who registered in community health service centers for physical examination was performed in Tianjin, China. Data of blood pressure and inflammatory cells were collected. Binary logistic regression was performed to assess the effect of hypertensive duration on the level of inflammatory cells before and after adjustment for the potential confounding factors.

Results

Individuals with hypertension had significantly higher level of leukocyte count, neutrophil proportion, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), and lower level of lymphocyte proportion than those without hypertension. Two-way ANOVA showed that hypertension duration, rather than blood pressure control or their interaction, had significant influence on the levels of neutrophil proportion, lymphocyte proportion, and NLR. With the prolongation of the duration of hypertension, the level of neutrophil proportion and NLR increased, and the level of lymphocyte proportion decreased. Long hypertension duration (>10 years) was significantly associated with high level of neutrophil proportion (OR = 1.48, 95% CI: 1.25, 1.75), high level of NLR (OR = 1.53, 95% CI: 1.29, 1.81), and low level of lymphocyte proportion (OR = 1.54, 95% CI: 1.30, 1.82) in comparison with short duration (<5 years) after adjustment for confounding factors.

Conclusion

Hypertensive patients had higher level of leukocyte count, neutrophil proportion, NLR, and lower level of lymphocyte proportion than normotensive ones. Long duration of hypertension was associated with aggravated inflammatory biomarkers.

KEYWORDS:

• Hypertension
• duration
• inflammatory cells
• leukocyte count
• Cross-sectional study

Acknowledgments

We thank all doctors, nurses, and research staffs at two Community Health Centers (CHCs) in this study and are grateful to all the participants who took part in the study and to the members of the survey teams. The authors thank Benmai Luo, and Yali Lu for analysis assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant no: 81602922, 82003533]; Ministry of Education of China Youth Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences [grant number: 13YJCZH281].