Epidemiological Studies in Hypertension

The April 2016 issue of the Journal of Human Hypertension is a special issue on Epidemiological Studies in Hypertension. Epidemiology is often referred to as the basic science of public health, as it gives us insight into the impact a particular condition has on the health of a particular population. It helps us plan health-related projects and helps us manage our resources so that we can target those at greatest need. Clinicians, on the other hand, occasionally feel that epidemiology is not relevant to their day-to-day clinical practice. However, they don't realise that results extrapolated from population-based epidemiological studies form the basis of how we manage individual patients. Epidemiology is more than just incidence and prevalence values as they also help us understand what is considered ‘normal’ or a ‘normal variant’. This issue has a wide range of epidemiology studies that include studies in indigenous populations and special age groups (adolescents) and also a set of normal values according to age groups in children.