Cardiovascular diseases are responsible for around 17 million deaths per year, accounting for nearly one-third of the total deaths in the world. The secondary effects of hypertension account for 9.4 million deaths worldwide every year, and high blood pressure is responsible for 45% of deaths due to heart diseases and stroke [1]. In the last 28 years, the number of people diagnosed with hypertension increased from 600 million in 1980 to 1 billion in 2008, and it is estimated that in the year 2025 the prevalence of hypertension will increase by 60% compared to the year 2000, and nearly 1.56 billion subjects will have hypertension worldwide [2,3].
