Study of blood pressure profile and anthropometry in children belonging to low socio-economic status; a prospective cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: A significant number of population in India are below poverty line. It contributes to the higher incidence of malnutrition especially among children which is 48% according to NFHS-3 (National family Health survey). Blood Pressure tracking studies suggest that hypertension in adulthood often has its origin in childhood. Blood pressure in childhood is the best predictor of hypertension in later life. There have been very few studies on malnutrition and Hypertension association and none in this area. One rationale for screening for hypertension in children and adolescents is that early identification of primary hypertension could lead to interventions to reduce blood pressure during childhood and adolescence, resulting in a reduced risk for cardiovascular events and death in adulthood.Methods: The present cross sectional prospective study was conducted on School going children (5-14 years) belonging to lower socio-economic status attending schools from Bhilai, DistrictDurg Chhattisgarh, India, within 5 km range of Chandulal Chandrakar Memorial Hospital over a period of 12 months from March 2015 to February 2016.The present study took 300 sample size. List of schools was arranged from district education officer (DEO) and required government schools were shortlisted on within 5 km range of hospital. After short history and examination, as per the prerequisite of proforma, the following measurements were taken. For all the statistical analysis MS EXCEL and SPSS 16 (Statistical Package for Social Science) version were used. The information collected was tabulated and the data was analyzed using suitable statistics.Results: 60% of the subjects were belongs to 5-10 years of age and 40% in 10-14 years’ age group. Males and females were equal in distributions (50% each), thus there were 150 males and 150 females in the current study. Overall prevalence of malnutrition in our study was 38.6%. The present study found 88 subjects (29.3%) having grade 1 malnutrition and 28 subjects (38.7%) having grade 2 and 0 (0%) with grade 3 and grade 4 malnutrition. There were 2 pre-hypertensives in our study, out of which one was male and one female. When analyzed according to nutritional status, there were 2 hypertensives in malnourished group. Similarly. there was 1 hypertensive in normal nutritional status group.Conclusions: There is a significant prevalence of malnutrition in our society which contributes to a more number of problems than what is presented to practicing paediatricians. The prevalence is higher in children <5 years age group overall which continues through school age and adolescent age group as shown in our study. The focus of attention should be identification of various diseases along with hypertension at the earliest and prevention of malnutrition.