Stress, migration, and blood pressure in Kiribati

Investigation into the relationship between essential hypertension and migration and modernization typically conclude that modernized, urban migrants have more elevated blood pressures with age and are more at risk from hypertension than are their traditional rural sedentary compatriots. These differences are often attributed to greater stresses on the migrating or modernizing segment of the population. In contrast, this study of rural sedentes and urban migrants in Kiribati (Gilbert Islands) indicates that hypertension and elevation of pressure with age have appeared in this modernizing population which was free of essential hypertension less than twenty years previously. Yet there are no significant differences in blood pressure or the incidence of hypertension of migrants and sedentes. This similarity of rural and urban islanders' health status is traced to the stress-relieving nature of migration and the urban experience in Kiribati.