Association of stressful life events with hypertension and impaired fasting glucose in rural residents

ObjectiveTo explore the impacts of stressful life events on hypertension and impaired fasting glucose among rural adults.MethodsWe selected residents aged 40-70 years from 18 villages in three townships using random cluster sampling and employed a questionnaire to collect information on demographics,stressful life events,and living behaviors of the participants by trained medical graduates with a face-to-face interview.Next day after the interview,we determined the participants' fasting capillary plasma glucose(FCG) using glucose meters and blood pressure derived from two consecutive measurements(at least 10 minutes apart) taken from the right arm after sitting still for at least 30 minutes using standard mercury sphygmomanometers.We adopted logistic regression to analyze the associations between hypertension,impaired fasting glucose and stressful life event,age,sex,education,smoking index,alcohol consumption,and body mass index(BMI).ResultsThere were significant differences in the prevalence of hypertension and FCG among the participants of different age,gender,smoking index,alcohol consumption per day(only for hypertension),BMI,and stressful life event index(all P<0.05).Logistic regression analyses revealed that hypertension was significantly related to age(odds ratioOR=0.35-0.66),gender(OR=1.81),education(OR=1.21),and BMI(OR=1.20) and impaired FCG was significantly related to education(OR=0.77-0.72),alcohol consumption per day(OR=1.64),BMI(OR=1.07),and stressful life events index(OR=1.32-1.80).ConclusionStressful life events are closely associated with impaired fasting glucose and life event intervention theory should be constructed to guide people to cope with stressful life event among rural adults.