Hypertension affected 4% of children worldwide, a systematic review and meta-analysis showed. The prevalence of childhood hypertension rose at a relative rate of 75% to 79% from 2000 to 2015 and was tied to BMI, reported Yajie Zhu, PhD, of the George Institute for Global Health at the University of Oxford in England, and colleagues. In 2015, childhood hypertension prevalence ranged from 4.32% at age 6 to 3.28% at age 19, peaking at 7.89% at age 14, they reported in J AMA Pediatrics .
"High blood pressure in children is linked to essential hypertension in adulthood and detrimental lifelong cardiovascular effects," Zhu said. This study is the first review of global childhood hypertension prevalence based on blood pressure measurements from at least three separate occasions, he added. "In children, the measurement of blood pressure is relatively complicated and unstable, so it needs to be…
