Factors associated with blood pressure disorders in Afro-descendant children and adolescents

Abstract

Background Hypertension (AH) is an emerging disease that has rapidly increased in the last decades throughout the world. The increase in blood pressure (BP) is observed with growth and development and, although the manifestation of the disease is rare in childhood and adolescence, its occurrence is increasing and the causes are likely to be from different combinations of factors. Afrodescendants have been consistently observed in many populations, including Brazil, which has the largest population of Afrodescendants outside Africa; nevertheless, data is scarce on the disease in children and adolescents. In this study, we investigated BP disorders in children and adolescents of “Quilombola” populations of the state of Tocantins, northern Brazil, and determined the disease occurrence with some factors, namely food consumption, body composition, anthropometric measures, and biochemical data. Methods We carried out a cross-sectional study with 67 children aged 10–17 years, comparing the variables studied between the normotensive and non-normotensive groups, using the Chi-square test for qualitative variables and the appropriate tests, according to data adherence to the Gaussian distribution for the quantitative variables. High blood pressure was defined as mean systolic or diastolic blood pressure ≥ 90 percentile for age, height, gender. Results The rate of adolescents with BP disorders was 19.4% (prehypertension 14.9% and hypertension 4.5%). There were no significant differences between the sexes for high blood pressure. In the Poisson regression analysis, the high fat percentage was associated with elevated blood pressure ( p = 0.021) for adolescents. Similar associations were observed for non-HDL-c ( p < 0.001) and low calcium intake ( p = 0.015). Conclusion Most children and adolescents in “Quilombola” communities had normal blood pressure. However, higher levels of dyslipidemia and low calcium intake are factors associated with prehypertension in the population studied with high BP.

Body Composition and Serum Total Calcium Were Associated With Blood Pressure Among Children and Adolescents Aged 7–18 in China: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Sex steroids, such as testosterone may play an important role in influencing blood pressure at puberty (32). The association between physical exercise and EBP was not consistent in previous studies (36–38). This inconsistency was possibly because of different measurement of physical exercise.…”

Undiagnosed prehypertension/hypertension in Canadian adolescents: The critical role of the public health nurse

“…Although this study focuses on reporting the new and unique finding of undiagnosed prehypertension/hypertension in urban and rural adolescents in Canada, key findings related to the comorbidities for prehypertension/hypertension were also identified. Although the association between increased BP and the risk for the development of diabetes is not a new phenomenon (Jobe et al, 2017;Simental-Mendía et al, 2019;Yan et al, 2015), the current study confirmed as prehypertension/hypertension (Quaresma et al, 2019;Sharma et al, 2018;Theodore et al, 2015).…”

“…Although an increasing trend of adolescent prehypertension/ hypertension has been observed globally (Song et al, 2019), the disconcerting rate of previously undiagnosed prehypertension/ hypertension found within this study of Canadian adolescents is evidently higher. For example, a study based in India found undiagnosed prehypertension/hypertension to only affect approximately 10% of adolescents (Sutradhar & Choudhuri, 2017); an Australian study examined cross-sectional data from a National health survey and found a prevalence of 12.6% (Larkins, Teixeira-Pinto, & Craig, 2018); and, a study from Nigeria found a prevalence of 6% of undiagnosed hypertension (Okpokowuruk, Akpan, & Ikpeme, 2017 reported approximately 20% of adolescents to have prehypertension/hypertension (Ingelfinger, 2014;Nayak, Dsouza, Shetty, & Ravishankar, 2018;Quaresma, da Silva Maciel, dos Santos Figueiredo, & Adami, 2019).…”

“…A systematic search of databases in Iran found a prevalence of childhood and adolescent hypertension to be approximately 9% (Akbari et al., 2017). Countries with an increased prevalence of adolescent prehypertension/hypertension included Southeast Asia, Brazil, and United States, which each reported approximately 20% of adolescents to have prehypertension/hypertension (Ingelfinger, 2014; Nayak, Dsouza, Shetty, & Ravishankar, 2018; Quaresma, da Silva Maciel, dos Santos Figueiredo, & Adami, 2019).…”

“…Although the association between increased BP and the risk for the development of diabetes is not a new phenomenon (Jobe et al., 2017; Simental‐Mendía et al., 2019; Yan et al., 2015), the current study confirmed that Canadian adolescents with elevated HbA1c measurements indicating prediabetes also presented with prehypertension/hypertension. Research shows that childhood hypertension directly impacts the development of chronic kidney disease, such as diabetes, and the microvascular and macrovascular complications have long been associated with the development of cardiovascular diseases, such as prehypertension/hypertension (Quaresma et al., 2019; Sharma et al., 2018; Theodore et al., 2015).…”