(Yicai Global) Nov. 16 -- The recent lowering of China’s diagnostic threshold for adult hypertension, or high blood pressure, will add to the burden on the country’s medical and insurance systems and could trigger health issues for people with low-risk blood pressure, according to an expert in the field.

“The potential dramatic increase in the number of high blood pressure patients caused by the new criteria will inevitably impact China's social and medical insurance system,” said Prof. Wang Jiguang, director of the Shanghai Institute of Hypertension at Ruijin Hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine.

“It will also increase the national medical burden and patients' spending on medical examination, diagnosis, treatment, and management,” he told Yicai Global.

Though the threshold for high blood pressure was changed to 130/80 millimeters of mercury from 140/90 mm Hg, according to the Chinese Clinical Practice Guidelines on Hypertension published on Nov. 13, the National Health Commission said in a notice yesterday that the official criteria had not been altered.

A switch to 130/80 mm Hg could more than double the number of high blood pressure patients in the country to 490 million from 240 million, challenging China’s high blood pressure prevention and control measures, according to Wang.

Wang said the 130/80 mm Hg threshold was a US proposal made in 2017, but as no country had yet introduced it, the United States was likely to revert to 140/90 mm Hg. 

The move is out of step with actual conditions in China and may lead to health issues for people with low-risk blood pressure, Wang pointed out. As such, the matter is “more than academic,” he said.

“No randomized and controlled clinical study has been published at home or abroad to confirm that low-risk patients with blood pressure of between 130/80 mm Hg and 139/89 mm Hg will benefit from antihypertensive medications, nor that such drugs are safe,” Wang noted, adding that treating this group may lead to serious health risks.

China has standardized procedures when setting diagnostic criteria for diseases such as hypertension, the NHC pointed out. Guidelines and consensus issued by professional bodies, industry and academic associations, individuals, and other groups are just research results and will not be used nationally, it said.

Editor: Martin Kadiev