Cardiovascular Risk Factor Status of Greek Adolescents in Athens

As it has been well documented recently, the early recognition in childhood and adolescence of risk factors for catastrophic conditions in the adult life, such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer, could be the only effective preventive measure for these diseases if these persons had an appropriate management. In order to establish the frequency of such risk factors in adolescents aged 10-15 years a collaborative study was carried out in 11 countries with the initiative of the American Health Foundation. A total of 1,113 Greek adolescents of both sexes aged 10-15 years attending public schools of the area of Athens was examined. For each adolescent a self-administered questionnaire was filled, blood pressure, pulse rate, anthropometric measurements taken and plasma cholesterol was estimated. One or more risk factors (hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, smoking, obesity - weight over the 90th percentile) were present in 34% of the Greek adolescents, who also had the highest mean quetelex index (weight to height square) among the 11 participating countries. The mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure were among the highest while the average plasma cholesterol (151.4mg/dl) was the lowest among the 11 countries. Although Greece has still a low cardiovascular disease mortality in comparison to other countries, the high incidence of risk factors in the adolescents found in the present study, may indicate an increase of morbidity and mortality in future generations.