Abstract

GORRITA PEREZ, Remigio Rafael; ROMERO SOSA, César Dayán  and  HERNANDEZ MARTINEZ, Yalili. Food habits, high body weight, smoking, lipidemia and blood hypertension in adolescents. Rev Cubana Pediatr [online]. 2014, vol.86, n.3, pp.315-324. ISSN 0034-7531.

Introduction: although it is known that the origin of blood hypertension may be found in the childhood and adolescence, this disease is not assessed in this phase as adequately as in the adulthood. Objective: to determine the incidence of blood hypertension in adolescent students and its association with food habits, high bodyweight, smoking and hyperlipidemias. Methods: a prospective and analytical study was conducted in 532 adolescents of both sexes aged 12 to 14 years; they studied at "Ignacio Agramonte y Loynaz" urban secondary school in San José de las Lajas municipality in the 2012-2013 academic year. The relative risk or incidence ratio was set for the studied factors and for blood hypertension. Results: high blood pressure figures were detected in 21 students (3.9 %). Obese and overweighed students accounted for 18.6 % of the total number, and just 5.45 % of the sample showed optimal frequency of possibly healthy food. Almost all of them were found to be among those with unhealthy or risk of unhealthy food. As to hypertensive children, 95.2 % showed unhealthy or risk of unhealthy food. Five percent of the group did smoke. In hypertensive children, 19 % and 14.3 % had high cholesterol and triglyceride values, respectively whereas 16.1 % of both lipids showed high values in obese students. Conclusions: the incidence of blood hypertension in adolescents from an urban secondary school was observed. Inadequate food habits, high bodyweight and smoking were identified in this group.

Keywords : adolescents; blood hypertension; obesity; overweight; food habits; smoking.

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