Why the study?
Overweight and obesity in childhood are suggested to increase the risk of hypertension later in life, but whether and how BMI trajectories from 6 to 18 years of age associate with hypertension in young adulthood in the Chinese population was unclear.
Do elevated or increasing BMI trajectories during childhood increase the risk of hypertension in young adulthood compared to a low slow-increasing trajectory?
Do elevated or increasing BMI trajectories during childhood increase the risk of hypertension in young adulthood compared to a low slow-increasing trajectory?
Elevated BMI trajectories during childhood are associated with an increased risk of hypertension in young adulthood, but weight loss in children with high initial BMI may mitigate this risk.
Increasing childhood BMI trajectories may raise later hypertension risk; extends prior cohorts but leaves mitigation by weight loss unresolved.
BACKGROUND: Overweight/obesity in childhood is suggested to increase the risk of hypertension later in life. We aimed to assess whether and how body mass index (BMI) trajectories during 6-18 years of age are associated with hypertension in young adulthood (18-37 years) in the Chinese population. METHODS: Based on the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), a total of 1,872 participants who received ≥2 measurements of BMI during 6-18 years and had assessment of blood pressure (BP) in young adulthood were included. BMI trajectories were explored using latent class growth mixture models, and associations between identified trajectories with hypertension in young adulthood were examined by logistic regression analyses. RESULTS: Five heterogeneous BMI trajectories were identified: the low slow-increasing (20.03%), low moderate-increasing (56.14%), low rapid-increasing (17.04%), moderate-increasing (3.63%), and elevated-decreasing (3.15%) groups. Compared with the low slow-increasing group, another three increasing groups had gradually elevated risk of hypertension, yielding maximally adjusted odds ratio (95% confidence interval) (OR (95% CI)) of 2.48 (1.39-4.42), 3.24 (1.66-6.31), and 3.28 (1.19-9.08), respectively, whereas the elevated-decreasing group reversed overweight/obesity to normal weight in childhood, rendering its association with hypertension as not statistically significant (OR (95% CI) = 2.74 (0.98-7.65)). CONCLUSION: Our study indicates that there are varied BMI trajectories from childhood to adulthood and that an elevated BMI trajectory during childhood is related with an increased risk of hypertension in young adulthood. In contrast, weight loss of children with high initial BMI may mitigate or reverse the risk. Our findings emphasize the importance of BMI continuous monitoring during early life.
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Teng et al. (2021) studied this question.
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