Background: Changing trend in lifestyle and increasing incidence of obesity in children may have a bearing on increasing incidence of adulthood hypertension. Recognition and timely intervention of childhood hypertension at the early stage may be the best strategy to decrease the burden of hypertension in the adult. Methods: This is a cross sectional study where school going children aged 5-15 years of age were examined physically and by 2D color Doppler Echocardiography. Children with systemic illness or any heart disease (structural or functional), were excluded. Anthropometric measurements particularly waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) were calculated and BP was recorded by aneroid sphygmomanometer. Statistical analysis was done using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22, and descriptive statistics like percentages, mean, median, standard deviation were generated.Results: Of the 2946 children selected out of 3600 examined, 1570 (53.30%) were boys and 1376 (46.7%) were girls with mean age of 11.06 years. The mean BMI was 17.82±3.76 kgm-2. The prevalence of normal, underweight, overweight and obesity were 84%, 6.3%, 8.04%, and 1.7 % respectively. The average mean SBP/DBP in children aged 5-10 years was (99.6±10.4)/(64.8±9.5) mmHg, while that in the group of 10-15 years was (105.2±11.5)/(67.4±9.1) mmHg. The total prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension in the study group were 516 (17.5%) and 451 (15.3%) respectively. Hypertension was detected in 14.55% of healthy weight, 21.6% of overweight and 29.4% of obese children.Conclusions: The prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension in school going children and adolescent is surprisingly quite high with a strong correlation with overweight and obese children.
BACKGROUND Childhood obesity is a precursor of metabolic syndrome in adulthood, characterized by hypertension and abnormal glucose metabolism. Waist circumference and waist-to-height ratio are an indicator of fat distribution in children and hence a useful predictor of cardiovascular risk. Objectives-To develop the waist circumference (WC) and waist height ratio (WHtR) percentile reference values of school going children aged 5-15yrs of Manipur, a northeastern state of India and to look its association with hypertension. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective, cross-sectional study was performed in school going children aged 5-15yrs in different districts of Manipur. Height, weight, WC and blood pressure (BP) were measured in 2334 children (1241 boys). Elevated BP was defined as either systolic BP or diastolic BP >95th percentile. Sex-specific reference percentiles were computed which construct reference percentiles. WC of 70 th , 75th and 90 th percentile, WHtR of 0.5 cut off were tested for its association with hypertension. RESULTS Age-and sex-specific WC and WHtR percentiles (5 th , 10 th , 25 th , 50 th , 70 th , 75 th , 90 th , and 95 th) are presented. WC values increased with age in both the boys and the girls. Statistically significant association of higher WC values with hypertension was shown in the overall age group and 10-15yrs group, but not in younger age group of 5-10yrs. CONCLUSION Simple easily measurable parameters like WC and WHtR can help in a long way in identifying children with and at risk of developing metabolic syndrome. Further regional studies should be conducted to better define the reference standard of WC and WHtR of children.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.