Longitudinal Studies of Blood Pressure in Children

Abstract

A longitudinal study of six years was conducted to find out the pattern of longitudinal changes of blood pressure and to affirm the “tracking phenomenon” of blood pressure in children in China. We initially measured blood pressure and related parameters of 2, 946 children (aged 4-14 years) in 1981 at Fanshan county, Beijing, and then two follow-up remeasurements were conducted in 1985 and 1987, respectively. The results indicated that: the average level of blood pressure increases with age even after adjusting for height and weight; tracking coefficients of systolic blood pressure range from weak to moderate levels, increasing with age. Only 30% of the children whose systolic blood pressure was beyond the 90th percentile of the systolic pressure distribution at the first examination remained at the same region after four years. Multiple stepwise regression was used to determine factors correlated with blood pressure. Our results indicate that systolic blood pressure in children is correlated with body w eight, pulse rate, scrum glucose and HDL-C, while diastolic blood pressure is correlated only with pulse rate and serum glucose.