Relationship between BMI and blood pressure in girls and boys

AIM: To investigate the relationship between BMI and blood pressure as this is of crucial interest in evaluating both public health and the clinical impact of the so-called obesity epidemic. METHODS: Data were gathered from 1899 children aged between 6 and 14 years, analysing and evaluating a possible relationship between BMI and systolic and diastolic blood pressure values for both girls and boys. Each child was classified on the basis of age- and sex-specific BMI percentile as normal weight (<85th percentile), overweight (95th percentile). RESULTS: In comparisons among age BMI percentile groups, systolic and diastolic blood pressure values were higher in obese and overweight groups than in normal weight groups for both sexes. Although BMI among girls was higher than among boys in all three percentile groups, there were no significant differences between sexes with respect to blood pressure values. CONCLUSION: The present findings emphasize the importance of the prevention of obesity in order to prevent future related problems such as hypertension in children and adolescents.