Nutritional status as a risk factor of elevated blood pressure in preschool children

Background: High blood pressure is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and neurological disease among children and adults. The American Heart Association recommended blood pressure evaluation among children aged more than 3 years for early detection of complications. Nutritional status was considered to have association with elevated blood pressure in children.

Objective: To assess the association between nutritional status and the blood pressure of preschool children in Denpasar, Bali.

Methods: This was a descriptive analytic cross-sectional study. Four hundred and fifty-six children aged 3-6 years who attended Kindergarten 2019 in Denpasar were enrolled by the cluster random sampling design.

Results: From 456 samples obtained ratio between boys and girls was 1,1: 1. Median age of the sample was 5 years (3-5 years old). The majority of nutritional status was well nourished (52.2%) and obesity was found 11.8%. majority children had normotension (64%), and followed by pre-hypertension (25.4%), hypertension stage 1 (8.6%) and hypertension stage 2 (2%). Bivariate analysis showed that obesity and sex were risk factor for toddler having higher level of blood pressure with. Multivariate analysis showed children with obesity and boys are 2.8- and 1.8-times more likely to have hypertension (CI 95% 1.72-4.81; CI 95% 1.24-2.76, respectively). Low birth weight and prematurity were not found to be significantly related to level of blood pressure.

Conclusion: Children with obesity were found to be significantly related to elevated blood pressure (hypertension).