Prevalence and risk factors of hypertension among bank employees in Dhaka city of Bangladesh

Abstract

: Jobs in the banking sector are perceived challenging and stressful; therefore, the likelihood of hypertension among the bank employees is high. However, no previous study investigated the prevalence and associated factors of hypertension among the bank employees in Bangladesh. Therefore, in this study, we estimated prevalence and risk factors of hypertension among a sample of bank employees in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. A cross-sectional design was employed to collect data from the 180 bank employees selected conveniently. Multiple logistic regression was conducted to observe the factors associated with hypertension. Prevalence of hypertension and pre-hypertension among the respondents were 24.44% and 32.22%, respectively. Furthermore, more than half of those found with hypertension were previously undiagnosed. We found that bank employees’ sex, family size, monthly salary, parental hypertension, parental diabetes, parental renal disease, and daily meat consumption were the factors significantly associated with hypertension. Our findings indicated that hypertension prevalence among the respondents was higher than that of national prevalence. Awareness build-up and healthy lifestyle is recommended to prevent hypertension associated morbidity and mortality in the future. Further studies could be carried out to identify the causal mechanisms of hypertension and appropriate interventions to address the issue.

Keywords:

• hypertension
• pre-hypertension
• bank employees
• blood pressure
• Bangladesh

Acknowledgements

Authors would like to thank University of Primeasia, Bangladesh for providing technical support and to respective bank authorities for allowing us to conduct the interviews.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethical issue

This study was conducted for the partial fulfilment of the Bachelor of Public Health Nutrition Program from the University of Primeasia, Bangladesh. The study protocol was reviewed by the review committee of the University of Primeasia, Bangladesh (PAU/IEAC/22/114). Ethical guidelines of the Bangladesh Medical Research Council (BMRC) were followed in this study. No invasive technique was used; no biological sample was collected and analysed. Scope of the research was clearly explained to the participants before interviewing and written consent was received.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.