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 The relatively small differences in blood pressure linked to rapid
weight gain for youngsters in the study may be tied to an increased
risk of other health problems in young adulthood, such as high
cholesterol or elevated blood sugars, say the authors of the study.
The researchers tracked changes in weight and height for 957 babies
up to age four and found the children who gained excessive weight
for their height, as reflected by higher body mass index (BMI),
tended to have higher blood pressure than peers at ages 6 to 10
years.
Each additional increment of BMI gained as an infant or toddler was
linked to an increase of about 1 to 1.5 mmHg (millimeters of
mercury) in systolic blood pressure.
“Previous studies have emphasized the importance of rapid weight
gain in early infancy in determining later blood pressure; the
current study adds to emerging data that weight gain during the
preschool years is at least as important as infancy weight gain in
relation to blood pressure,” said senior study author Dr. Mandy
Belfort of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Linear growth – when children add pounds at a steady pace – doesn’t
appear to be a problem for childhood blood pressure, Belfort added
by email. Instead, the culprit may be sudden surges in weight that
aren't matched by increases in height.
“Our finding that gain in body mass index, not linear growth,
predicted later blood pressure suggests that more rapid accumulation
of fat may be important,” Belfort said. “Our research does suggest
that more is not always better when it comes to weight gain in
babies.”
Belfort and colleagues reviewed data from medical records starting
when babies were born. On average, the kids were around 8 years old
at the mid-childhood checkup, with average systolic blood pressure
(the top number) of 94.4 mmHg and average diastolic blood pressure
(the bottom number) of 54.3 mmHg.
While ideal blood pressure for children at any given age varies by
gender and height, this average for 8-year-olds would be in a range
generally considered healthy.
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High blood pressure is harder to detect in children than in adults.
In adults, 140/90 or greater is considered high. There's no single
cut-off in children, however. In general, children with blood
pressure higher than 95 percent of children of the same gender, age
and height can be diagnosed with high blood pressure. Since
children's blood pressures will vary greatly based on these factors
as they're growing up, there is no set range that defines normal or
high.
Kids in the study who experienced unusually large surges in BMI
before 6 months of age or between ages 2 and 3 years had higher
systolic blood pressure in mid-childhood then their peers who
experienced steadier growth throughout those periods.
The magnitude of the increase in systolic blood pressure was larger
for the preschoolers than the infants, the study also found.
Birth size didn’t appear to influence the results.
One limitation of the study is that it can’t prove that rapid
increases in BMI directly caused higher blood pressure, only that
there was a connection between the two things, researchers
acknowledge in the journal Hypertension.
Still, the findings support recommendations that mothers breastfeed
infants until age 6 months because this is linked to less weight
gain than formula feeding, noted Caryl Nowson, a diet and nutrition
expert at Deakin University in Australia who wasn’t involved in the
study.
Once young children move on to solid food, parents should avoid
giving kids soft drinks and limit consumption of fruit juice, both
of which can contribute to weight gain, Nowson added by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1WAWRTa Hypertension, online December 7, 2015.
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