High Blood Pressure and Its Association with Body Weight among Children and Adolescents in the United Arab Emirates

To estimate the prevalence of high blood pressure (BP) and its relationship with obesity among children and adolescents. for age, sex, and height (CDC percentiles) were classified as pre-hypertension (pre-HTN) and hypertension (HTN), respectively. Associations between BP, age, BMI, WC, and sex, were investigated by (multiple) linear regression methods. A total of 999 (47% girls) students provided complete results. The prevalence of pre-HTN was 10.5% and 11.4% and the prevalence of HTN was 15.4% and 17.8% among boys and girls, respectively. The prevalence of systolic/diastolic HTN was 14.4%/2.5% and 14.8/7.4% among boys and girls, respectively. BMI CDC percentile was positively correlated with WC percentile (r = 0.734, p<0.01), and both systolic (r = 0.34, p<0.001) and diastolic (r = 0.21, p<0.001) standardized BP. WC percentile was less strongly correlated with standardized SBP (r = 0.255, p<0.01) and DBP (r = 0.175, p