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Parents’ BP, waist-to-hip circumference helped identify masked hypertension in offspring
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Children of parents who have hypertension and larger waist–hip circumference may be at higher risk for hypertension, even if they have normal BP at a doctor’s office visit, study results indicated.
Researchers enrolled 110 children and adolescents (aged 5 to 15 years) in the prospective study, 99 of whom completed a BP evaluation. Family history of BP, weight, height, BMI and waist-to-hip circumference were all assessed. The final analysis included data from 82 participants who had an office BP lower than the 95th percentile.
According to the study results, 70 of the 82 participants had a normal BP within the 90th percentile and 12 were prehypertensive. Ten participants were diagnosed with masked hypertension following ambulatory BP monitoring. In addition, children of hypertensive parents had at least a fourfold increased risk for having masked hypertension (P=.032), which was compounded to a ninefold increased risk in children of hypertensive parents with a waist-to-hip circumference ≥.09 (P=.020). Variables such as age, sex, ethnicity and excess weight did not influence risk.
“The children found to be hypertensive with ambulatory BP monitoring were not even in a prehypertensive state in the doctor’s office. Their BP was normal,” Claudia Maria Salgado, MD, PhD, an adjunct professor in the department of pediatrics and hypertension at the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil, said in a press release. “The fact that the BP rates for these patients escalated so significantly is alarming and warrants attention if additional data confirm these findings.”
These data were presented earlier at the American Society of Hypertension’s 25th Annual Scientific Meeting and Exposition in New York.
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