Medical students may be more than twice as likely to have hypertension than their peers, a study at one US medical school suggests.

Examining 213 first- and second-year medical students, researchers from the Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, found that 17.8% of them had stage 2 hypertension as defined by US guidelines.

In contrast, the prevalence of stage 2 hypertension (blood pressure greater than 140/90mmHg) in the general population was 7.5% for people aged 18-39, the researchers noted.

This meant the condition was 2.4 times more prevalent in the medical students than in their peers, they reported at the American Heart Association Hypertension 2019 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans.