High blood pressure on the rise in American children

Researchers in the U.S. are warning that blood pressure levels among American children are on the rise.

In a newly published study the scientists say their findings add to a growing body of evidence linking obesity to serious health problems.

The researchers examined data from seven U.S. government surveys conducted from 1963 to 2002 on youngsters aged 8 to 17 and warn that high blood pressure has become more common in U.S. children and teenagers.

Researcher Dr. Rebecca Din-Dzietham an associate professor of community health and preventive medicine at Morehouse School of Medicine says the finding is a call to action and unless the upward trend in high blood pressure is reversed, an explosion of new cardiovascular disease cases in young adults and adults is pending.

Din-Dzietham and colleagues reviewed almost 40 years of government data on high blood pressure (hypertension) and prehypertension in children and teens.

During that time high blood pressure or borderline high blood pressure was uncommon in children and teenagers but the researchers say the trends paint a different picture.

The children's blood pressure, height, weight, and waist circumference were checked and from 1963 to 1988, high blood pressure and borderline high blood pressure became rarer among this group.

But from 1988 on that trend has been reversed and has been increasing ever since.

High blood pressure increases the risks for heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, and other serious health conditions and the worry is that if high blood pressure starts in childhood, those problems may begin earlier in life.

The researchers found that each 0.4 inch increase in waist circumference raised the likelihood of high blood pressure by 10 percent and the likelihood of pre-high blood pressure by 5 percent.

Pre-high blood pressure was defined as either the systolic or diastolic blood pressure falling between the 90th percentile and the 95th percentile while high blood pressure was readings above that.

The Heart Association says just over 11 percent of children and teens had high blood pressure in 1980, and that fell to 2.7 percent in the 1988-94 survey, but rose to 3.7 percent in the latest survey done in 1999-2002.

The trend was apparently most pronounced among Mexican-American males, who were included in the surveys for the first time from 1982; the survey found that 5.3 percent of these young men had high blood pressure in 1999-2002.

The research is published in the current issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation.