Anthropometric determinants of resting blood pressure and heart rate of Nigerian school children

Abstract

Blood pressure, heart rate and anthropometric parameters were measured in 807 Nigerian school-age children. There was no significant difference between the blood pressure and heart rate of boys and girls after adjusting for differences in age and anthropometric parameters. The stepwise regression analysis revealed that the strong determinants of blood pressure levels were weight, Quetelet index and triceps skinfold thickness. Based on our findings, we recommend that body weight norms rather than age should be used in evaluating abnormal blood pressure levels in Nigerian children.

AnthropometricIndicesAssociated with Variation in Cardiovascular Parameters among Primary School Pupils in Ile-Ife

“…Findings from previous longitudinal studies of Blood Pressure (BP) suggests that essential hypertension in adults can be detected in early life [3, 4]. Because of the public health value of prevention of hypertension, a lot of work has been done to find out the prevalence of childhood hypertension [3–5].…”

“…Because of the public health value of prevention of hypertension, a lot of work has been done to find out the prevalence of childhood hypertension [3–5]. Part of the findings of these studies is that prevalence of hypertension in children has racial and rural-urban variations [3, 4]. …”

“…In African children, higher risks of cardiovascular disease have been found among Urbanites than rural dwellers, however, no consistent trend was found along socioeconomic and ethnic lines [4–6]. These inconsistencies in the trend of essential hypertension in Africa have made it difficult to extrapolate adult risk for high BP from a child's BP.…”

Casual blood pressure of adolescents attending public secondary schools in Maiduguri, Nigeria

“…Insufficient breastfeeding, overweight or obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse, lack of physical fitness, and socioeconomic status have been associated with hypertension and so are diets high in sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and diabetes mellitus [8, 9]. Whereas another study shows low prevalence from 0–10.5 % of adolescents between the age of 12 to 18, and the higher the age the higher the prevalence [10]. …”

Normative Values of Selected Anthropometric Variables in Lagos Nigerian Population

“…Balogun et al concluded that weight was a more important determinant of blood pressure than age in the Nigerian population [18]. Sayannwo et al carried out a cross-sectional survey of the population of Gassim of Saudi Arabia and computed the BMI of 6044 individuals [19].…”