What Exactly Do the Trends Mean?

Abstract

Although the adverse public health and economic consequences of obesity have been reported for some time, little success has been achieved in controlling the progressive increase in population prevalence and severity of obesity. The obesity epidemic in children is especially sobering. More than 17% of children are obese, and these rates have increased with each new survey. A consequence of childhood obesity has been the premature onset of diseases associated with obesity. The chronic disorders of hypertension, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and sleep apnea, which had been considered conditions of middle to late adulthood, now appear in childhood. When the cardiovascular morbidity associated with these conditions is considered, the health impact of childhood-onset hypertension or diabetes mellitus is likely to be enormous. Article p 1488 The extent to which childhood obesity could contribute to an increase in the prevalence of hypertension was studied in a report in this issue of Circulation . Din-Dzietham et al1 conducted a study in which they examined the secular trend in the prevalence of high blood pressure (BP) among children and adolescents to determine if the rise in childhood obesity contributes to an increase in the prevalence of high BP. Data were drawn from serial health surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics between 1963 and 2002 on a representative sample of the noninstitutionalized civilian US population. Data on children between the ages of 8 to 17 years, which included measurement of BP, were the focus of their analysis. The investigators applied the current BP criteria for hypertension and prehypertension in childhood2 to the data from the participants in each of the 6 survey periods between 1963 and 2002 to determine the prevalence of high BP in each survey period. The representations of non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Mexican-American children were …