Association Of Heart Rate And Blood Pressure With BMI In Children

As childhood obesity is a single marker of the child at risk for development of various non-communicable diseases later in life, we have conducted a cross sectional study of 2000 school going children from age group 7-11 years to find the prevalence of obesity & its association with heart rate & blood pressure. Method: Schools were selected based on simple random sampling method. Prevalence of childhood obesity was calculated based on BMI using NCHS guidelines. Resting Blood Pressure (B.P) was determined using mercury manometer with appropriate sized cuffs, by auscultatory method. Heart rate was recorded in each child after 5 min of rest for 1 minute and comparison was done between normal and obese children. In those children who were categorized as overweight and obese. Result: The prevalence of over-weight and obesity was 15.5% and 8.1% respectively. Overall, males were slightly more obese than Females. We found 303 overweight children with 5.6% hypertension among them and 12.34 % incidence of hypertension in 162 obese children. The incidence of hypertension in normal children was 0.78%.The mean heart rate in normal, overweight & obese children were 97.37, 100.54 ,& 106.71 respectively. Conclusion: The fact that obese children have higher cardio-vascular risk factors like hypertension and increased heart rate when compared to non obese children has been reinforced by the present study.These children are at a higher risk of “childhood onset of adult diseases”. Thus, timely intervention will result in decreased adulthood morbidity and mortality due to obesity in these children