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Why stigmatize overweight young people as hypertensive by using normative percentiles from non-overweight youth?

International Journal of Obesity volume 39, page 1508 (2015)Cite this article

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In the July issue of the Journal, Genovesi and Giussani1 address the practically important question of pediatric blood pressure (BP) reference values relating to the article of Barba et al.2 who provided oscillometric reference values in European non-overweight school children. Genovesi and Guissani are concerned with the increasing number of children having elevated BP values compared with the new normal values based on normal-weight subjects.

We would like to share a similar debate by citing a commentary from Urbina and Falkner3 and our response4 relating to our auscultatory BP reference values in normal-weight, overweight and obese children, and adolescents.5 We found nearly identical BP values at the 50th, 90th and 95th percentiles in children and adolescents using the data of all 22 051 subjects and 18 917 non-overweight youths in both genders but considerably higher values in obese children and adolescents. Our conclusion is to use special percentiles for overweight and obese youths.

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References

  1. Genovesi S, Giussani M . Blood pressure reference values for normal-weight children: are they necessary? Int J Obes (Lond) 2015; 39: 1174.

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  2. Barba G, Buck C, Bammann K, Hadjigeorgiou C, Marild S, Molnar D et al. Blood pressure reference values for European non-overweight school children: The IDEFICS study. Int J Obes (Lond) 2014; 38: S48–S56.

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  3. Elaine M Urbina, Bonita Falkner . Right analysis—wrong conclusion: obese youth with higher BP are at risk for target organ damage. Am J Hypertens 2015; 28: 570–571.

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  4. Schwandt P, Scholze JE, Bertsch T, Liepold E, Haas GM . Response to ‘right analysis—wrong conclusion: obese youth with higher BP are at risk for target organ damage’. Am J Hypertens 2015; 28: 1072–1073.

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  5. Schwandt P, Scholze JE, Bertsch T, Liepold E, Haas GM . Blood Pressure Percentiles in 22 051 German Children and Adolescents: The PEP Family Heart Study. Am J Hypertens 2015; 28: 672–679.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    P Schwandt

  2. Atherosclerosis Prevention Institute, Munich-Nuremberg, Germany

    P Schwandt & G-M Haas

Authors
  1. P Schwandt
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  2. G-M Haas
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Correspondence to P Schwandt.

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Schwandt, P., Haas, GM. Why stigmatize overweight young people as hypertensive by using normative percentiles from non-overweight youth?. Int J Obes 39, 1508 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2015.150

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