Daily Telegraph  22 August 2007

The obesity epidemic is causing an increase in the number of children with high blood pressure, doctors have warned.  New research has shown that the problems with obesity is causing conditions previously only seen in adults to be diagnosed in children.  Scientists who studied 14,187 children aged between three and 18 found that more than three per cent had high blood pressure but three quarters of them had not been properly diagnosed.  The team warned that doctors need to be more aware of the condition.

It comes as one quarter of children in the UK are classed as overweight and the obesity epidemic is growing. Having hypertension as a child increases the risk of heart disease in adulthood as the longer blood pressure is elevated the greater the risk.  Children are also being diagnosed with type two diabetes which is usually associated with being overweight.

The authors of a study of children in Ohio, America and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association said: “Hypertension in children has been shown to correlate with family history of hypertension, low birth weight, and excess weight. With the increasing prevalence of childhood weight problems, increased attention to weight-related health conditions including hypertension is warranted. Several lines of evidence suggest that blood pressure in US children and adolescents is increasing in parallel with weight.”

Of the 14,187 children and adolescents studied between June 1999 and September 2006 in the outpatient clinics 507 children and adolescents (3.6 per cent) had hypertension. Of those 131 (26 per cent) had a diagnosis of hypertension or elevated blood pressure documented in the electronic medical record meaning three quarters had not been formally diagnosed.

Around 30 per cent of overweight children have abnormal blood pressure, the paper said.  Consultant paediatrician Russell Viner, spokesman for the Royal College of Paediatrics, said weight loss is the first line treatment for high blood pressure in children and medication is not normally used unless the reading is very high.  He said: “This study confirms what we are seeing. There are an increasing number of children with obesity and that leads to high blood pressure.  There is more high blood pressure around because o f obesity and paediatricians need to be aware of it.”