What is the relationship between blood pressure and age, physical fitness, relative weight, smoking, and alcohol consumption in middle-aged males?
In middle-aged men, blood pressure is positively associated with age, weight, and alcohol consumption, but negatively associated with physical fitness and smoking.
The separate relationships between BP and age, physical fitness, relative weight, smoking and alcohol consumption have been studied in a cardiovascular survey of 5249 middle‐aged males. Increasing age, relative weight and alcohol consumption were all positively related to the height of BP. In contrast, physical fitness and smoking were negatively related. The separate linear effects of age, relative weight and physical fitness were estimated by means of multiple regression analysis. The BP differences between smokers and non‐smokers and drinkers and non‐drinkers could not be explained by differences between the groups in respect of age, relative weight or physical fitness.
Gyntelberg et al. (Sat,) studied this question.