We tested the hypothesis that women who are thin or have poor pregnancy weight gain have offspring with higher blood pressure and examined whether this link is mediated by increased secretion of cortisol. We studied a cohort of 388 children born in Kingston, Jamaica. From hospital records we obtained information ...

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies find a progressive increase in the prevalence of elevated blood pressure with increasing adipose tissue. But there is no common opinion about which effectiveness of the anthropometric measurement tools indicating general or android obesity are most important to follow up in patients with elevated blood pressures. OBJECTIVES: ...

AIMS: To assess the associations of type and duration of infant feeding with components of the metabolic syndrome in children aged 9 and 15. METHODS: A total of 2192 randomly selected schoolchildren aged 9 and 15 years from Estonia (n = 1174) and Denmark (n = 1018) were studied. Insulin ...

OBJECTIVE: It had been suggested that programming of the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal axis may underlie the associations of reduced size at birth with raised blood pressure in later life. We investigated whether morning salivary cortisol mediates the inverse association of birthweight with systolic blood pressure in children. DESIGN: Subjects and measurements--a historical ...

BACKGROUND: The weight loss surgically induced by gastroplasty or gastric banding has only a transitory effect on the arterial hypertension of the severely obese patients, and a prevalence of hypertension similar to that of controls has been reported 8 years after the operation. METHODS: We studied the effects of biliopancreatic ...

STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the contribution of body composition measurements to clinical assessment in patients on home nasal positive-pressure ventilation for chronic hypercapnic respiratory failure (CHRF), and their relationship to respiratory impairment. METHODS: Patients with CHRF (restrictive lung disease (RLD), n=37; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), n=19), during elective yearly ...

Many studies have assessed short-term effects of weight loss on blood pressure, whereas little attention has been paid to long-term effects. We conducted a systematic review to evaluate the long-term effects of weight loss on hypertension outcome measures in adults using literature published from 1966 to 2001. All prospective studies ...

Weight reduction in clinical populations of severely obese children has been shown to have beneficial effects on blood pressure, but little is known about the effect of weight gain among children in the general population. This study compares the mean blood pressure at 14 years of age with the change ...

Higher or similar systolic and/or diastolic blood pressure has been recorded in children with sleep apnea compared to subjects with primary snoring or in those with primary snoring compared to controls. To investigate the association between blood pressure and habitual snoring, we studied children in four randomly selected schools in ...

We compared factors associated with sympathetic cardiac activity in 70 male adolescents (34 obese and 36 with appropriate weight). In fasting we measured insulin, leptin, glucose, blood pressure, and heart rate variability by power spectral analysis. Obese adolescents had higher values for systolic blood pressure, insulin, leptin, low frequency/high frequency ...

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: While treating high blood pressure in middle age is beneficial in terms of reducing the occurrence of cardiovascular disease, treated and well controlled hypertensive adults still have a substantial excess mortality and reduced survival compared with normotensives. Therefore, identification of the means of preventing hypertension in earlier ...

BACKGROUND: Foetal growth retardation (FGR), defined as less than the 10th percentile of birth weight for gestational age, is reported to be an important contributor to hypertension and cardiovascular disease in children and adults, but findings are not consistent. For this reason we re-examined the role of FGR in childhood ...

Fetal growth retardation has been linked to elevated blood pressure in adult life. This association between birth weight and blood pressure is present in childhood and is amplified with age. However, the mechanisms that underlie this association are largely unknown. We examined the relationship between birth weight and forearm vascular ...

BACKGROUND: We have shown that increased cardiac output is related to both fat-free mass and fat mass in obesity. OBJECTIVE: We studied the association of body fat distribution and body composition with flow-resistance relations in overweight. DESIGN: We studied 521 overweight, nonobese participants in the Hypertension Genetic Epidemiology Network (HyperGEN) ...

Obesity has been shown to be associated with increased left ventricular mass (LVM) and heart sympathetic activity even in nonhypertensive subjects. These factors are predictors of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality independent of other traditional risk factors. We evaluated the effect of losartan and spironolactone on LVM and heart sympathetic activity ...

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether constitutional laxity of the connective tissues is more frequently present in adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) than in healthy controls. Increased joint hypermobility in patients with CFS has been previously described, as has lower blood pressure in fatigued individuals, which raises the question of whether ...

BACKGROUND: Blood pressure during childhood is an established predictor of adult blood pressure, which in turn increases mortality as a result of cardiovascular disease. Adult South Asian populations are particularly predisposed to cardiovascular disease compared with whites, but the prevalence of high blood pressure and determinants of blood pressure in ...

The association between obesity and hypertension is well known. The hemodynamic features of obesity-related hypertension are an expansion of extracellular volume inducing hypervolaemia and increased cardiac output, with activation of both the sympathetic nervous system and the renin--angiotensin system. It is suggested that obesity-related hypertension may be considered as a ...

OBJECTIVE: Pulse pressure, a marker of arterial vascular properties, has been linked to cardiovascular diseases and complications. This study examined the impact of excess body mass and cardiovascular disease risk factors on pulse pressure (PP). DESIGN: Cross-sectional and prospective study. METHODS: Baseline data consist of 219 obese African Americans, with ...

The purpose of the present study was to determine the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and parameters derived from 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring including mean 24-hour daytime and nighttime systolic and diastolic blood pressures, 24-hour daytime and nighttime pulse pressure, mean 24-hour daytime and nighttime heart rate, dipping ...

Abnormalities in whole blood viscosity (WBV) have been implicated in hypertension. This study analyzes relations between WBV and blood pressure in the Strong Heart Study population of American Indians. We examined 676 participants (489 women, age 62+/-7 years) without prevalent cardiovascular disease or use of antihypertensive medications, digoxin, or aspirin. ...

OBJECTIVE: In virgin policystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) patients transabdominal sonography is the preferential method of the pelvic examination. The purpose of this study was to determine ovarian morphology by the transabdominal route by pulse inversion harmonic imaging (PIHI) in virgin PCOS patients and to compare the diagnostic image quality with ...

Hypertension is a medical disorder frequently associated with severe obesity, and the effect of weight loss on the reduction of blood pressure has been well established. In this study, the relationships between the weight loss surgically obtained by biliopancreatic diversion and blood pressure were investigated in a population of severely ...

OBJECTIVE: To assess the influence of resistance training on resting blood pressure in healthy sedentary adults. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search with the MEDLINE computerized database was conducted and reference lists of published articles and reviews on the topic were checked. Inclusion criteria were as follows: the study involved a ...

BACKGROUND: In 2001 the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) provided a categorical definition for metabolic syndrome (c-MetS). We studied the extent to which two ethnic groups, Blacks and Whites were affected by c-MetS. The groups were members of the Hypertension Genetic Epidemiology Network (HyperGEN), a part of the Family Blood ...

Physical inactivity is recognised as a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Current recommendations for participation in physical activity are 30 minutes or more of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, but preferably all days of the week. The aim of the study ...

The hypothalamus is a critical integrator of several homeostatic processes that are required for the survival of vertebrates. Disruption of the development of the hypothalamus thus has the potential of perturbing important physiological processes with lifelong consequences. We review current knowledge about how cell types are specified and circuits are ...

Some researchers have recently questioned the validity of associations between birth weight and health in later life. They argue that these associations might be due in part to inappropriate statistical adjustment for variables on the causal pathway (such as current body size), which creates an artifactual statistical effect known as ...

Using data from 17 years of a large and nationally representative panel study from Germany, the authors examined whether there is a set point for life satisfaction (LS)--stability across time, even though it can be perturbed for short periods by life events. The authors found that 24% of respondents changed ...

BACKGROUND: Obesity has become an epidemic problem, contributing to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. An adequate blood pressure control in this population of obese individuals is extremely difficult to achieve, and in most cases, therapeutic combinations are required. Pharmacologic treatment with moxonidine, a central I(1) imidazole ...

BACKGROUND: Diets characterized by high intakes of fruits and vegetables and low-fat dairy products (for example, the DASH diet) have been shown to reduce blood pressure in adults. The effects of similar diets on children's blood pressure are unknown. METHODS: We used 8 years of follow-up data from 95 children, ...

BACKGROUND: High blood pressure, once rare, is rapidly becoming a major public health burden in sub-Saharan/Africa. It is unclear whether this is reflected in children. The main purpose of this study was to assess blood pressure patterns among rural, semi-urban, and urban children and to determine the association of blood ...

In this study, the authors examined biomedical consequences of participation in a professionally delivered, multifaceted very low calorie diet (VLCD) program and whether the degree of benefit associated with treatment was moderated by history of weight cycling. The authors monitored body weight and biomedical health indicators in 66 severely obese ...

Obesity is strongly associated with hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Several central and peripheral abnormalities that can explain the development or maintenance of high arterial pressure in obesity have been identified. These include activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system. Obesity is also associated with endothelial dysfunction and ...

We characterized the systolic and diastolic blood pressures of 10-week-old males from 15 inbred mouse strains and found that blood pressures among strains were continuously distributed and that strain C3H/HeJ had the lowest mean systolic and diastolic pressure (100.5 +/- 3.2 and 66.8 +/- 3.5 mmHg), and a strain with ...

BACKGROUND: Although previous studies have generally reported increased plantar pressure values with obesity, none of these studies has classified the obesity. Our aim in this study was to compare the plantar pressure distribution in obese and control adults during standing and walking. METHODS: This study was performed on 100 feet ...

The clinical significance of childhood hypertension is important as elevated pressures during childhood are found to follow a progressively increasing track into adulthood. Little work has been done to examine the relationship of emotions and emotional behavioral factors to the development of hypertension in children. Using the Roy Adaptation Model ...

PURPOSE: To find out the prevalence of hypertension in employees of the Hospital and relate it to social demographic variables. METHODS: Blood pressure measurement was performed with a mercury sphygmomanometer, using an appropriate cuff size for arm circumference, weight, and height in a population sample of 864 individuals out of ...

1. WHO-coordinated Cardiovascular Diseases and Alimentary Comparison Study (CARDIAC) and its follow-up, MONALISA Study covering 60 populations in 25 countries indicated an increasing prevalence of obesity, even in developing countries. 2. The index of obesity, BMI was confirmed to be related positively with both systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP) ...

Tracking correlations of blood pressure, particularly childhood measures, may be attenuated by within-person variability. Combining multiple measurements can reduce this error substantially. The area under the curve (AUC) computed from longitudinal growth curve models can be used to improve the prediction of young adult blood pressure from childhood measures. Quadratic ...

Findings of previous reports relating low birth weight with raised blood pressure in childhood and adolescence have been inconsistent. The present study uses cross-sectional data from a series of nationally representative annual surveys--the Health Survey for England--between 1995 and 2002, totaling a sample of 15 629 children aged 5 to ...

Data on the birth weight-blood pressure relationship are inconsistent. Although an inverse association has been suggested in several large studies, interpretation is complicated by publication and other biases. Few data are available on the relationship between other early growth measures and blood pressure. We examined the shape and size of ...

BACKGROUND: Obesity is associated with heart failure, but an effect of weight, independent of comorbidities, on cardiac structure and function is not well established. We sought whether body mass index (BMI) and insulin levels were associated with subclinical myocardial disturbances. METHODS AND RESULTS: Transthoracic echocardiography, myocardial Doppler-derived systolic (sm) and ...

In the general population, there is an inverse relationship between birth weight and adult systolic blood pressure. Because blood pressure in diabetic patients at least in part seems to be regulated by different mechanisms than in nondiabetic subjects, it is not known whether a similar correlation exists in diabetic individuals. ...

BACKGROUND: We examined the associations of a range of parental and early life characteristics with systolic blood pressure at 5 years of age. METHODS AND RESULTS: Information from 3864 children who were followed up prospectively from their mother's first antenatal clinic assessment was used. Maternal age, body mass index, and ...

BACKGROUND: Although the relationship between body weight and blood pressure (BP) is well established, there is a lack of data regarding the impact of obesity on the prevalence of hypertension in primary care practice. The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence of hypertension and the diagnosis, treatment ...

In humans, infants who are born small have been reported to have higher blood pressure in adulthood than do larger infants. This suggests that factors in the intrauterine environment that affect fetal growth can program the individual for hypertension later in life. The present study determined whether there is a ...

In epidemiology the analyses of family or twin studies do not always fully exploit the data, as information on differences between siblings is often used while between-families effect are not considered. We show how cross-sectional time-series linear regression analysis can be easily implemented to estimate within- and between-families effects simultaneously ...

BACKGROUND: Pathogenesis of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is multifactorial, but evidence that the sympathetic system is involved in progression of cardiovascular structural alterations in hypertension is substantial. However, the relationship between heart sympathetic activity and left ventricular mass in normotensive obese subjects has not been studied. METHODS: We studied 103 ...

BACKGROUNDS/AIMS: To assess the age- and gender-specific anthropometric parameters and blood pressure in Hungarian adolescents. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was performed between 1997 and 2000. Altogether 6,345 secondary school students (aged 15-18 years) were involved in the study. The representative sampling sites were selected randomly. In the capital city 3-stage ...