Correlation of weight-height index with diastolic and with systolic blood pressure.

The relationship between blood pressure level and various parameters of body build and obesity has been extensively reported on, and the subject has been recently reviewed by Chiang, Perlman, and Epstein (1969). The relative strength of the correlation of these indices with systolic as com pared with diastolic pressure varies. In some studies, the correlation with diastolic pressure was higher than that with systolic pressure (Dawber, Moore, and Mann, 1957; Khosla and Lowe, 1965; Reid, Holland, Humerfelt, and Rose, 1966) and in others, the reverse was reported (Hartman and Ghrist, 1929; Boynton and Todd, 1948; B0e, Humerfelt, and Wedervang, 1957). These appar ently contradictory results may be due in part to the different indices of body build used and, in the report of Hartman and Ghrist, reservations re garding the reliability of the diastolic pressure readings. In view of these findings it was decided to investigate the correlation of systolic and diastolic pressures with a weight-height index in a popula tion study when each pressure is adjusted for the effect of the other. This paper reports on differ ences in these correlations obtained from data of the Israel Ischemic Heart Disease Project.