In our study, 30.2% of rural adults had prehypertension.
The prevalence rate is lower than other study of rural adults
(44.1%) [11]. The age of our study is older than that study
(59.9 vs 51.2 years) [11]. Sun et al. stated that with age
increasing, the prevalence rate of prehypertension decreased,
whereas the prevalence rate of hypertension increased [11].
Evidence has shown that prehypertensive individuals are at
higher risk than normotensive individuals for progression to
hypertension [4,9]. Prehypertensive individuals are also at
higher risk for developing cardiovascular disease [3–10].
Therefore, prehypertensive individuals should receive early
intervention to prevent long-term complications.