Arterial Stiffness and Blood Pressure in a Multicultural Child Sample (Angola, Brazil, and Spain)

Abstract

BACKGROUND To analyze the relationship between early-life indicators, blood pressure (BP), and arterial stiffness in childhood, in three samples with different bio-cultural characteristics. METHODS The total sample included 520 schoolchildren 9–10 years of age from Madrid (Spain), Vitória (Brazil), and Luanda (Angola). Height and weight, BP, and carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity (cf-PWV) were measured, all by one observer in each site, and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Birth weight, gestational age, type of feeding, and age at weaning were extracted from official health cards. Data were analyzed by multiple linear regression models. RESULTS No significant differences were observed in systolic blood pressure (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) among the samples (P = 0.107 and P = 0.808). Luanda showed the higher cf-PWV (5.7 m/s), followed by Vitória (5.3 m/s) and Madrid (4.9 m/s; P < 0.001). Explanatory factors for the observed variability in SBP, DBP, and cf-PWV, obtained by means of multiple linear regression models, were different in three samples. BMI showed a positive and significant association with SBP, DBP, and cf-PWV in three samples. In the Angolan sample, in addition to BMI, birth weight was maintained in the explanatory models of SBP and cf-PWV adjusted for BP, with a negative and significant coefficient (−0.019 and −0.019) CONCLUSIONS Higher values of BMI in childhood are related with higher values of cf-PWV, SBP, and DBP in the three samples. Children from Angola showed the highest mean value of cf-PWV, especially those who had lower birth weight, suggesting that worse conditions in fetal life may contribute to increased aortic stiffness in childhood.

Pediatric obstructive sleep-disordered breathing is associated with arterial stiffness

“…There are few validation studies that compare invasive and non-invasive measures of arterial stiffness in [18] Similarly, Montero Lopez et al (2019), described a positive correlation of PWV with BMI in a multicenter study involving children aged 9 to 10 years. [19] In addition to the increased AIx@75 in children with oSDB, it was observed in our results that AIx@75 in females was 31.64% higher than in males. However, the difference was not signi cant.…”

Impact of perinatal factors on biomarkers of cardiovascular disease risk in preadolescent children

“…Higher aortic arch PWV was found in the LBW/SGA/FGR group in 10-year-olds [53], but not in 1 week to 6-month-old infants (n ¼ 112) [54]. Carotid-femoral PWV measured at 9 years was inversely associated with birth weight (n ¼ 520) [55]; while carotid-femoral PWV was similar in 6-year-old children with FGD compared with controls (n ¼ 797) [40].…”

Dietary Intake and Arterial Stiffness in Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review

“…Table 1 summarizes characteristics of included studies. We identified 6 intervention studies, including 4 parallel RCTs [19,[23][24][25], 1 randomized cross-over trial [26], 1 3-y follow-up of a parallel RCT [27] and 13 observational studies, including 4 prospective cohorts [18,[28][29][30]] and 9 cross-sectional studies [16,17,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. One of the cross-sectional studies [31] was comprised of baseline data from one of the included parallel RCTs [24]; two of the prospective cohort studies were based on the same birth cohort study of children, however, had two independent aims (e.g., The Generation R Study) [29,30].…”

“…Ten studies were conducted in Europe [17,24,26,[28][29][30][31][32]34,36], three in the United States of America (USA) [16,19,23], four in Australia and New Zealand [18,27,35,37], one in India [25] and one study collected data across three countries (Angola, Brazil and Spain) [33]. A range of dietary components was assessed, including supplemental vitamin D (n = 3) [19,23,25], supplemental omega-3 fatty acids (n = 2) [26,27], supplemental milk proteins (n = 2) [24,31], infant feeding practices (n = 3), [28,29,33], dietary patterns (n = 6) [17,18,32,[34][35][36], macronutrient intake (n = 2) [30,31], sodium intake (n = 1) [16] and consumption of specific food groups (n = 3) [17,31,37], such as fast food and sugar-sweetened beverages. The measures used to assess dietary intake varied across studies.…”

“…Within intervention studies, compliance with supplements was assessed via tablet counting [19,23,26,27] or self-reported diaries [24], combined with biochemical measures (e.g., plasma 25(OH)D [19,23,25], serum omega-3 [26,27], or serum urea-Nitrogen [24]). Within observational studies, six used food frequency questionnaires (FFQ) [17,30,[34][35][36][37], three used self-reported questionnaires assessing infant feeding practices [28,29,33], one used 7-day food records [28], one used 3-day food records [16], two used a 4-day food checklist [18,31], one used 24-h diet recall [36], one used the KIDMED 16-item questionnaire [32] and two studies used multiple measures [28,36]. The most commonly used index of arterial stiffness was PWV (n = 18), with most of these studies (n = 17) reporting carotid-femoral PWV (cf-PWV).…”