Children with high blood pressure (hypertension) are likely to have high blood pressure as adults. There's no question that adults with high blood pressure have more heart attacks, strokes, and many other health problems.
From 1988 to 2000, the number of adults (18 years and older) with hypertension increased by nearly 15%. This increase is primarily due to an increase in adult obesity. Obese children are more likely to become obese adults than normal-weight children. Without a doubt, there's an epidemic of obesity in this country affecting both adults and children.
The obesity epidemic is affecting children in many ways. A recent comparison of the average blood pressure of children 8 to 17 years old found a small but significant increase. The average systolic blood pressure for these children during the 1988-1994 period was 104.6; the average diastolic 58.4. For the years 1999-2000, the average systolic was 106.0; the average diastolic 61.7. That's an increase of 1.4 for the systolic pressure and 3.3 for the diastolic.
The greatest diastolic increase was found in Mexican-American children (systolic up 2.3; diastolic up 4.4). Black children had the second-most significant elevations (systolic 1.9; diastolic 4.1) followed by white children (systolic 1.0; diastolic 2.8). The girls in this study had a slightly higher increase than the boys. Perhaps most significant is the difference between the elevations of the children ages 8-12 compared to that for the children ages 13-17. The younger group had an average systolic elevation of 1.9 and diastolic elevation of 4.8. For the older group, the systolic elevation was only 1.0 and the diastolic 1.7. The reasons for these differences aren't know.
These elevations, particularly in the younger children, are a concern. It's easy to draw a cause and effect relationship between the increase in childhood obesity and the increasing blood pressures and it seems to be a reasonable conclusion. But this may not be correct. We don't know if there are other factors that may be independently causing both problems.
Journal of the American Medical Association, 5/5/04
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