Prevalence of high blood pressure and association with obesity in Spanish schoolchildren aged 4 –6 years old

by Noelia Mart ín-Espinosa, Ana Díez-Fernández, Mairena Sánchez-López, Irene Rivero-Merino, Lidia Lucas-De La Cruz, Montserrat Solera-Martínez, Vicente Martínez-Vizcaíno, Movi-Kids group BackgroundThe prevalence of high blood pressure in children is increasing worldwide, largely, but not entirely, driven by the concurrent childhood obesity epidemic. The aims of this study were to examine the prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension in 4-to-6-year-old Spanish schoolchildren, and to evaluate the association between different blood pressure (BP) components with different adiposity indicators. MethodsCross-sectional study including a sample of 1.604 schoolchildren aged 4-to-6-years belonging to 21 schools from the provinces of Ciudad Real and Cuenca, Spain. We measured height, weight, body mass index (BMI), fat mass percentage (%FM), triceps skinfold thickness (TST), waist circumference (WC), systolic and diastolic BP, mean arterial pressure and pulse pressure. ResultsThe estimates of prevalence of prehypertension and hypertension were 12.3% and 18.2%, respectively. In both sexes, adiposity indicators were positively and significantly associated with all BP components (p
Source: PLoS One - Category: Biomedical Science Authors: Source Type: research