Blood-pressure levels in children and adolescents are on the rise after several decades of decline, says a study that will be published in the September 25 issue of Circulation, the Dallas-based American Heart Association’s medical journal.
The prevalence of high blood pressure in youths increased by an average of 1 percentage point in all children since 1994, with the most pronounced increase in Mexican-American males, for whom the prevalence increased by 2.2 percentage points. Researchers analyzed data from the National Center for Health Statistics to compare the body-mass indices and waist circumferences of 29,165 8- to 17-year-old girls and boys.
