Adult children of parents with type 2 diabetes are more likely to have high blood pressure if they have prediabetes, and the increased risk is similar for blacks and whites, a new study found. The results will be presented Tuesday, June 17, at The Endocrine Society’s 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

“Efforts to prevent diabetes could well prevent high blood pressure as well as their precursors—prediabetes and prehypertension,” said Samuel Dagogo-Jack, MD, lead author of the study and an endocrinologist at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Blacks have a higher prevalence than whites of both hypertension (high blood pressure) and type 2 diabetes. However, it is unclear whether blacks also have a higher prevalence of prehypertension and prediabetes, Dagogo-Jack said.

Prehypertension is a near-high blood pressure that raises the risk of developing high blood pressure. Prediabetes is a mild elevation in blood glucose, or sugar, level that usually occurs before diabetes develops. At least twice as many people have prediabetes and prehypertension as do those who have diabetes and high blood pressure, according to Dagogo-Jack.

The authors sought to clarify the ethnic patterns of these two common conditions. They studied changes in blood pressure in relation to blood sugar in 200 nondiabetic adults who were at increased risk of type 2 diabetes because their parents had the disease. Of the participants, 120 were black and 80 were white. Their average age was 45, and many were overweight or obese. The American Diabetes Association and the National Institutes of Health provided research grants for the study.

Unlike the well-known ethnic disparity in high blood pressure, the study showed similar blood pressures in blacks and whites who had a genetic risk for diabetes. However, 56 percent of these offspring of diabetic parents had either high blood pressure or prehypertension, according to the abstract. More than 37 percent had prehypertension, a number far above the approximately 15 percent prevalence reported for persons of similar age in the general population, Dagogo-Jack said.

Most importantly, Dagogo-Jack said, subjects who had prediabetes were more likely than those with normal blood sugar to have either high blood pressure (23 versus 16 percent, respectively) or prehypertension (42 versus 33 percent). The prehypertension prevalence in prediabetic subjects was similar among blacks and whites (40 versus 46 percent).

“Mild elevations of blood sugar appear to drive blood pressure increases,” he said. “The most important application of these findings would be a policy change that mandates ‘one-stop shopping’ for the prevention and management of hypertension and diabetes.”

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Founded in 1916, The Endocrine Society is the world's oldest, largest, and most active organization devoted to research on hormones and the clinical practice of endocrinology. Today, The Endocrine Society's membership consists of over 14,000 scientists, physicians, educators, nurses and students in more than 80 countries. Together, these members represent all basic, applied, and clinical interests in endocrinology. The Endocrine Society is based in Chevy Chase, Md. To learn more about the Society, and the field of endocrinology, visit our web site at www.endo-society.org.