August 22, 2007
Hypertension Often Missed in Children

Hypertension––elevated blood pressure––is a common chronic disease of children and adolescents that is often underdiagnosed and untreated, according to a research report in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers who studied a group of children 3 to 18 years of age in outpatient clinics at a large academic urban medical system found that a number of factors, including patient age, height, obesity, and the difficulty of getting consistent readings of blood pressure over time, make it hard to diagnose hypertension, even though taking blood pressure is often part of a well-child visit. Stressing the importance of following up on readings of elevated blood pressure, the researchers noted that one form of hypertension––"secondary" hypertension, meaning the high blood pressure results from some other condition such as renal disease-is more common in children than in adults. And although the majority of children with mild to moderate hypertension have the "primary" form, in which a cause is not identifiable, the increased prevalence of childhood weight problems calls for increased attention to weight-related problems such as high blood pressure, the researchers stress. An article, "Underdiagnosis of Hypertension in Children and Adolescents," appears in the August 22/29, 2007, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.