Fat children face 6 times more blood pressure risk

OBESE children are up to six times more at risk of high blood pressure than youngsters of normal weight, warn researchers.

Young obese girls have a 5.9fold chance of developing it compared with those of healthy weight, while the risk is 4.3 times greater for obese boys.

One in three children is overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school in the UK. The study also shows overweight children are more likely to have high blood pressure – linked to heart disease in adults.

It comes as doctors called for a national taskforce to tackle the ‘rising epidemic’ of childhood obesity. In an open letter to England’s chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies the Royal College of GPs warned a generation will be ‘destroyed’ unless urgent action is taken.

Medical professionals and schools would collaborate to try to prevent obesity and improve treatment to stop children’s health problems in later life.

The college’s Dr Richard Roope

‘Rising epidemic’

said: ‘For the first time, we have a generation of patients who may predecease their parents. Only 3 per cent of the public associate weight with cancer, yet after smoking obesity is the biggest reversible factor in cancers.’

Evidence of the link between body fat and ill health in children was released yesterday by researchers from Nuremberg, Germany. It included 22,051 youngsters, aged three to 18, from ‘health-conscious’ families.

Scientists found the prevalence of high blood pressure increased in boys and girls as weight went up. Hypertension in boys of normal weight was 5.7 per cent, rising to 10.4 per cent for the overweight and 18.6 per cent in obese boys.

But it was most common among obese girls at 24.4 per cent, and 9 per cent in the overweight, compared with 5 per cent in those of normal weight.

Professor Peter Schwandt, speaking at a European Society of Cardiology meeting yesterday, said: ‘Our study clearly shows that the fatter young people are, the greater their risk of … hypertension. Any weight loss … will help reduce their risk.’