High blood pressure, growing health concern among adolescents in Lagos —Study

IN Lagos, 26.7 percent of ‘good-looking’ adolescents have high blood pressure, a reason the need for routine blood pressure screening in school health programme is necessary, a study has said.

In the study, the researchers put the prevalence of high blood pressure, elevated blood pressure and hypertension among adolescents at 26.7 percent, 13.8 percent and 12.9 percent, respectively.

Published in the 2023 edition of the Pan African Medical Journal, the study said although high blood pressure (HBP), which was once considered rare in adolescents, it is now a growing health concern, with adolescent boys having an increased risk than adolescent girls.

In the study, middle and late adolescence, when compared to early adolescence, significantly predicted the likelihood of high blood pressure in adolescents even as associated factors for hypertension, such as obesity, was observed in 16.5 percent of the study population.

Risk factors for high blood pressure in adolescents include age, gender, obesity, physical inactivity, family history in first-degree relatives, socioeconomic status, cigarette smoking and alcohol intake. Other risk factors include birth weight, maturity during birth, heredity, medications and neoplasm.

The study, conducted to determine the prevalence of high blood pressure among 1,490 students aged 10 to 19 in 14 secondary schools (12 private and two public) selected from Mushin Local Government Area of Lagos State between August 2020 and December 2020, also suggested that the prevalence of high blood pressure increases progressively with the age group.

Adolescents who had kidney conditions such as glomerulonephritis (damage to the tiny filters inside the kidneys called glomeruli) and those who were on antihypertensive medications were excluded in the study.

The researchers said, “That more than a quarter of the adolescents in the present study had high blood pressure is indicative of a high prevalence. This emphasises the fact that healthy adolescents do have high blood pressure, thus underscoring the need for routine blood pressure screening in the school health programme.

“This will enable the identification of adolescents with abnormal values for appropriate intervention, to prevent target organ damage.

“Blood pressure elevation in childhood is recognised as a predictor of high blood pressure in adults. Missing high blood pressure in any child exposes that child to adult hypertension and hypertensive target organ damage, including heart and blood vessel-related diseases such as stroke, retinopathy, heart disease, heart failure and kidney failure.

“Large-scale studies must be carried out in the community(s) to further explore demographic variables; that may explain the varied prevalence of hypertension and correlates in different parts of Nigeria.”