TUESDAY, Dec. 3, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Deportation worry is associated with an increased risk for incident hypertension in women, according to a study published online Nov. 27 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
Jacqueline M. Torres, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the University of California in San Francisco, and colleagues examined the correlation between deportation worry and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcomes in 572 women, mainly of Mexican origin.
The researchers found that 48, 24, and 28 percent of the women reported “a lot,” “moderate,” and “not too much” deportation worry, respectively. There was an association between higher worry at baseline and nonlinear systolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure trajectories. “A lot” of worry compared with “not too much” worry was associated with a faster initial increase (β, interaction with linear year term, 4.10) followed by a faster decrease in systolic blood pressure (β, interaction with quadratic year term, −0.80). Weak evidence was found for an association between deportation worry and diastolic blood pressure; no association was seen with body mass index, waist circumference, or pulse pressure trajectories. Compared with reporting “not too much” worry, reporting “a lot” and “moderate” deportation worry was associated with an increased risk for incident hypertension among 408 women without baseline hypertension (hazard ratios, 2.17 and 2.48, respectively).
“There is an urgent need to understand the impact of immigration policy and resulting deportation fears on CVD outcomes and related risk factors of immigrants and their family members,” the authors write.
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