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Prevalence of hypertension is now increasing rapidly in Bangladesh, particularly among the socio-economically disadvantaged population. This could be linked to their higher use of solid fuel; however, related evidence is scarce in Bangladesh. We aimed to determine the associations of household solid fuel use and its exposure level with systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and hypertension.

Total of 7,320 women’s data extracted from the 2017/18 Bangladesh Demographic and Health Survey were analysed. We considered three outcome variables: (i) systolic blood pressure (continuous response), (ii) diastolic blood pressure (continuous response) and (iii) hypertension status (yes, no). Cooking fuel use (clean fuel vs solid fuel) and levels of exposure to household air pollution (HAP) through solid fuel use (unexposed, moderately exposed, highly exposed) were our primary exposure of interest. A multilevel mixed-effects Poisson regression model with robust variance was used to determine the association between exposure and outcome variable adjusting for confounders.

Around 82% of the total respondents analysed used solid fuel for cooking. The overall age-standardised prevalence of hypertension was 28%. The likelihood of becoming hypertension was found 1.44 times (95% CI, 1.04-1.89) higher among respondents who used solid fuel as compared to the respondents who used clean fuel. The likelihood of hypertension was found to be increased with the increased exposure to HAP through the solid fuel used; 1.61 times (95% CI, 1.07-2.20) higher among the moderate exposure group and 1.80 …