Overweight children with high blood pressure risk

Overweight children and adolescents are at higher risk for hypertension

08/31/2014

Even children and adolescents have a significantly higher risk of high blood pressure if they are suffering from obesity or obesity. For girls, the danger increases with increasing weight.

High blood pressure risk in overweight
Even children and adolescents have a significantly higher risk of high blood pressure if they are overweight. This emerges from a press release of the German Society of Cardiology (DGK) for the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Barcelona. There, the data from the Nuremberg PEP Family Heart Study were presented. For more than 22,000 children and adolescents between the ages of three and 18, the study examined the relationship between high blood pressure and obesity or body fat distribution.

Significantly increased risk
„Compared to non-obese children and adolescents, the risk of prehypertension in obese and obese boys was 1.6 and 2.4 times higher and 1.8 and 3.3 times higher in girls, respectively“, explained Prof. em. Dr. Peter Schwandt from the University of Munich. The press release of the DGK states: „While among the non-obese male children and adolescents 13.2 percent had pre-hypertension and 5.7 percent had hypertension, those values ​​were 18.3 and 10.4 percent, respectively, and increased to 21.9 and 18, respectively, in the obese , 6 percent.“

Girls are at even higher risk
In girls, the respective frequencies were 12.9 and five percent for normal weight, 18.7 and 9.1 percent for obese and 24.9 and 24.4 percent for obese. Thus, girls have so with increasing body weight, an even higher risk of high pressure. „An increase in the prevalence of elevated blood pressure associated with increasing body weight can be avoided if overweight and obesity are prevented in children and adolescents through more exercise and less calorie intake“, said Prof. Schwandt. „This also effectively prevents obesity and hypertension in adulthood.“

One third of the world population is too fat
How important a corresponding prevention would be, is shown by current figures. Just a few months ago, the results of a survey by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) published that nearly one-third of the world's population is overweight or obese. The study also found a significant increase in overweight among the youngest. The author Marie Ng said then: „We know that childhood obesity has serious downstream health effects, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and many cancers.“ The authors said that the „Frequency of obesity and obesity in children and adolescents“ has grown significantly in both developed and developing countries. (Ad)