Incidence of New-Onset Hypertension Before, During, and after the COVID-19 Pandemic: a 7-Year Longitudinal Cohort Study in a Large Population

While the augmented incidence of diabetes after COVID-19 has been widely confirmed, controversial results are available on the risk of developing hypertension during the COVID-19 pandemic. We designed a longitudinal cohort study to analyze a closed cohort followed up over a 7-year period, i.e., 3 years before and 3 years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and during 2023, when the pandemic was declared to be over. We analyzed medical records of more than 200,000 adults obtained from a cooperative of primary physicians from January 1, 2017, to December 31, 2023. The main outcome was the new diagnosis of hypertension. We evaluated 202,163 individuals in the pre-pandemic years and 190,743 in the pandemic years, totaling 206,857 when including 2023 data. The incidence rate of new hypertension was 2.11 (95