NEW YORK, May 19 (UPI) -- A study of 8,000 U.S. adolescents shows without drug treatment or lifestyle changes, youth with high blood pressure become hypertensive young adults.
Dr. Bonita Falkner, professor of medicine and pediatrics at Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, examined data from the National Childhood Blood Pressure Database, comparing single blood-pressure readings taken two years apart among 4,147 boys and 4,386 girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years.
They found that there was a linear increase -- from normal blood pressure, to prehypertension, to hypertension -- in the percentage of adolescents classified with hypertension at the second examination.
"These findings are valuable, because while an adult's current blood pressure level is the strongest indicator of that individual's blood pressure in the future, the variability of blood pressure in the young make it less clear how well blood pressure classification at any particular point in time predicts subsequent blood pressure classification in an otherwise healthy adolescent population," said Falkner.
The findings were presented at the 21st Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Society of Hypertension in New York.
