Historical Cohort Study on the Factors Affecting Blood Pressure in Workers of Polyacryl Iran Corporation Using Bayesian Multilevel Modeling with Skew T Distribution

BACKGROUND Hypertension is considered as a major public health problem in most countries due to its association with ischemic heart disease which causes cerebrovascular disease and death. OBJECTIVES The purpose of the present study was to study factors affecting Blood Pressure (BP). PATIENTS AND METHODS The data were extracted from annual observation of the workers who worked in Polyacryl Iran Corporation (PIC) between 1998 and 2010. In this research, we assessed the effect of Body Mass Index (BMI), age, sex, job status, marital status, job schedule type, and education level on Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) and Diastolic Blood Pressure (DBP) using Bayesian multilevel modeling with skew t distribution using WinBUGS software. RESULTS Totally 3965 persons participated in this study, 75(1.9%) female and 3890 (98.1%) male. In this study age, sex, BMI, job status, marital status, and education level had statistical association with SBP. The result for DBP was similar to SBP except the education level which had no statistical association. CONCLUSIONS Treating obesity, increasing physical activity and quality of married life are proposed as practical solutions to reduce BP.