Health status and hypertension: a population-based study.

We describe the relation between self-reported hypertension and measures of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in a community-dwelling population. In a cross-sectional study, 1430 randomly selected adults, aged 45 to 89 years, were interviewed to obtain a medical history and health status measures, including the SF-36 questionnaire, the Quality of Well Being (QWB) index, and time trade-off (TTO) assessments. A total of 519 participants reported being affected by hypertension (HTN group). The HTN group, compared to the No HTN group, had significantly lower age-adjusted health status scores measured by the General Health scale of the SF-36 and by TTO, with differences between groups for each measure comprising approximately 5% of the total scale. HTNs also had a significant decline in general health status measures associated with increasing numbers of antihypertensive medications but not with specific classes of medications. We conclude that hypertension and hypertension drug therapy are associated with clinically meaningful decreases in reported health status.