Hypertension is present in approximately 10% of Nigerian adolescents, with higher rates in females and those with elevated BMI, highlighting the importance of early cardiovascular risk screening.
May inform local adolescent screening; hypothesis-generating without causal links to adult CVD.
Background: Hypertension is one of the major risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD). Though generally believed to be a disease of the adults, It has been shown to start in early life and tracks through adolescence into adulthood.Aims and Objectives: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of hypertension and associated factors among adolescents in Ekiti State.Materials and Methods: The study was a cross sectional survey involving 416 secondary school adolescents aged 10 to 19 years. A ‘two-stage’ sampling technique was used to select the subjects. Facilitated self-administered questionnaire was used for the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20. Level of significance was set at P<0.05.Results: A total of 416 students participated in the study. Prevalence of hypertension was 10.1% with male and female prevalence rates of 5.8% and 14.4% respectively (P=0.004). Hypertension was higher among adolescents with BMI ≥ the 85th percentile for age and sex compared to those with lower BMI (P=0.004). There was a weak positive correlation between BMI and blood pressure in the study (Systolic r=0.33, P=0.001: diastolic r=0.31, P=0.001).Conclusion: The study concluded that hypertension is not a rare phenomenon among adolescents and that female gender and high BMI were the main risk factors for adolescent hypertension in this study.Asian Journal of Medical Sciences Vol.8(4) 2017 1-5
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Emmanuel et al. (2017) studied this question.
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