Prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension in asymptomatic urban school going children of Mangalore and its correlation with BMI

Abstract

There is increasing evidence of high BP among asymptomatic children. This has been associated with life style influenced co-morbid conditions like obesity. This cross sectional non interventional observational study was designed to determine the prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension in school going children aged 13-17 years in an urban city. Anthropometric & BP measurements were taken as per standard methods. Agarwal charts were used to estimate BMI for age and sex. The average of 3 BP measurements were compared to age, sex and height percentile standards given by the report of Fourth task force on hypertension control in children. Spearman correlation was applied for independent variable (BMI) with dependent variables. Non parametric tests Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to determine the association of gender and BMI with outcomes like average DBP, average SBP, pre-hypertension and hypertension. Prevalence of hypertension was 6.75% and 8.4% for pre-hypertension among the 785 studied, 10.5% boys and 8.5% girls were overweight and 5.8% boys and 5.1% girls were obese. In girls, increasing BMI was associated significantly (p<0.0001) with average SBP and average DBP in both pre-hypertension and hypertension groups but in boys only DBP was found to be significantly (p<0.0001) associated with BMI. A higher prevalence of pre hypertension and hypertension seen in our study group compared to similar studies in the state. Children with higher BMI were associated with pre-hypertension or hypertension.