SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research International Journal of Hypertension Volume 2011, Article ID 605359, 6 pages doi:10.4061/2011/605359 Review Article Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Management of Prehypertension Wenwen Zhang and Ninghua Li Department of Epidemiology, Beijing Hospital and Beijing Institute of Geriatrics, Key Laboratory of Geriatrics, Ministry of Health, Beijing 100730, China Correspondence should be addressed to Ninghua Li, nhliof@yahoo.com.cn Received 14 February 2011; Revised 6 July 2011; Accepted 16 August 2011 Academic Editor: Zafar Israili Copyright © 2011 W. Zhang and N. Li. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Prehypertension remains an important public health challenge all over the world and appropriate treatments should be adopted to prehypertensive group in diﬀerent degree eﬀectively. This review aimed to assess the prevalence of Prehypertension and provide eﬀective evidence of the beneﬁts of treating prehypertensive patients. The reasonable evaluation and appropriate intervention of prehypertensive remain need further study. 1. Introduction Prehypertension was deﬁned as a systolic blood pressure of 120–139 mmHg and/or a diastolic blood pressure of 80– 89 mmHg. The concept of prehypertension was introduced as the new guideline for the management of blood pressure by the seventh report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure (JnC-7) [1]. The objectives of deﬁning this classiﬁcation of blood pressure were to draw the clinical and public healthy attention onthe prevention of people in this range. Prehypertension is a precursor of clinical hypertension and is closely related with the increased incidence of cardio- vascular disease [2–4]. Patients with Prehypertension (120– 139/80–89 mmHg) have an increased risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality compared with patients who have normal blood pressure (<120/80 mmHg). This paper aimed to assess the prevalence of Prehypertension and provide eﬀective evidence of the beneﬁts of treating prehypertensive patients in community. 2. Epidemiology 2.1. High Prevalence of Prehypertension. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2000 reported that the overall prevalence of prehypertension was 31% all over the world, which was higher in men than in women [5]. A statistical analysis of disease-free adult NHANES participants which was conducted from 1999 to 2006 found that the overall prevalence of PreHTN in disease- free adults was 36.3% [6]. The ATTICA study which included 1514 men and 1528 women found that the prehypertensive population was 39% (43% in men and 35% in women) [7]. The prevalence of prehypertension in India was found more than 45% (of the 2,007 people studied, 47.4% had Prehy- pertension and 34.7% had hypertension. Prehypertension was found in 46.6% of the men and 49.8% of the women). The data from Korean Nation Health and Nutrition Survey 2001 reported that the estimated age-adjusted prevalence of hypertension and prehypertension was 22.9% (26.9% in men, 20.5% in women) and 31.6% (41.9% in men, 25.9% in women [8]). The Jichi Medical School Cohort Study showed that the prevalence of prehypertension was 34.8% (males) and 31.8% (females) in Japanese general population [9]. Cross-sectional surveys of Shandong and Wuhan Provinces revealed that the prevalence of prehypertension was more than 40% in China [10, 11]. 2.2. Risk Factors. Prehypertension is correlated with the recognized traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity, diabetes mellitus, and dyslipidemia. NHANES II 1999-2000 data showed that 64% of individuals with pre- hypertension had at least another cardiovascular risk factor; persons with Prehypertension were 1.65 times more likely to have at least another adverse risk factor than those with normotension and the percentage increased to 94% in those