Short answers, pulled from the story.
Hypertension is a long-term medical condition in which blood pressure in the arteries is persistently elevated. For most adults, Stage 1 hypertension begins at a resting blood pressure of 130/80 mmHg, and Stage 2 at 140/90 mmHg or above.
In 2024, an estimated one in three people globally, roughly 1.4 billion adults, had hypertension. In 1990, the comparable figure was about 650 million, with the rise driven largely by an aging population in low- and middle-income countries.
About 90 to 95% of hypertension cases are primary, or essential, hypertension, resulting from a combination of genetic factors and lifestyle influences including excess dietary salt, excess body weight, physical inactivity, smoking, and alcohol use. More than 2,000 common genetic variants with small individual effects on blood pressure have been identified.
A hypertensive crisis is a severely elevated blood pressure at or above 180 mmHg systolic or 120 mmHg diastolic. It becomes a hypertensive emergency when direct damage to organs such as the brain, kidney, heart, or lungs is occurring, producing symptoms including confusion, chest pain, and breathlessness.
The first chemical used against hypertension was sodium thiocyanate in 1900, but it had many side effects. The genuine breakthrough came in 1958 with chlorothiazide, the first thiazide diuretic, developed from the antibiotic sulfanilamide. Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, and ACE inhibitors followed in subsequent decades.
Hypertension occurs in approximately 8 to 10% of pregnancies. Pre-eclampsia is a serious condition in the second half of pregnancy marked by elevated blood pressure and protein in the urine; it occurs in about 5% of pregnancies and accounts for roughly 16% of all maternal deaths globally. It also doubles the risk of death for the baby around the time of birth.