Publication:

Elevated blood pressure and obesity in young adults of hypertensive parent versus normotensive parents

Background Hypertension has become one of the leading cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Family history of hypertension increases the risk of occurrence of elevated blood pressure and hypertension in their offspring. Simple measures like blood pressure measurements and anthropometric measures can used easily for screening them. So, this study was aimed to assess the association of elevated blood pressure and obesity in young adults of one parent hypertensive versus normotensive parents.

Methods This is a case control study. Subjects were selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria with a sample size of 82, using a pretest proforma. Weight, height, heart rate and blood pressure were measured for each participant using standard methods. Then the data obtained was analyzed using mean±SD and unpaired t- test.

Results BMI and systolic blood pressure were found to have significant difference when compared between group-I and group-II, with p-value of 0.0003 (<0.05) and 0.0145 (<0.05) respectively. Whereas other parameters like heart rate, diastolic pressure and mean arterial pressure did not show any significant difference between group-I and group-II.

Conclusions Elevated blood pressure and increased BMI in young adults of single parent hypertensive, is stressing upon the need to screen them at their first and second decades of life to prevent complications in the future.