Prevalence of hypertension in mid adolescents in central India: A school based comparative study

Abstract

Introduction: Hypertension among children and adolescents has increased significantly in the developed countries during the past two decades and similar trends are being observed even in the developing world. Methods: Mid adolescent boys and girls (14-16years) of three government and four private schools of Ujjain city were included with sample size of 1000. A pre designed questionnaire regarding nutritional and dietary history was prepared with measurement of anthropometry. Results: The overall prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension children in our study is 6.8% and 8.2% respectively, where as worldwide prevalence of hypertension is 7% to 19%. The prevalence of systolic pre-hypertension and systolic hypertension in children of government schools (14-16 yrs) was 7.5% and 8.5% respectively. In private schools out of 75 hypertensive students 49 (65.3%) (p=0.06) were consuming excess calorie. The incidence of systolic hypertension was low in the students with physical, activity ≥1hr/day and it was observed that both TV watching and Computer use were not associated with hypertension. Conclusion The prevalence of systolic hypertension in boys was higher in private schools as compared to government (7.8%>5.9%). Girls were more hypertensive in government as compared to private schools (12.4%>7.9%). Various factors which were found to have correlation with hypertension include calorie intake, number of meals per day, lack of physical activity in the present study.