Blood pressure and anthropometry in parents and children of a southern Italian village.

In an investigation on hypertension risk factors, the entire school population was examined in Trecchina, a southern Italian village. The reported findings refer to those children examined together with at least one parent, for a total of 134 mother-child pairs and 128 father-child pairs. For these groups of children, fathers and mothers, systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) blood pressure, weight (W), height (H) and triceps skinfold (TS) were detected and body mass index (BMI) was calculated in order to evaluate the prevalence of high blood pressure (BP) values and if overweight. Of 19.3% children, 26.9% fathers and 15.8% mothers showed high BP values ; 28.9% of children, 14.0% of fathers and 19.3% of mothers were overweight. In children, the analysis of correlations, after adjustment for height, showed a significant association between BP and W, BMI and TS. Using multiple regression analysis, with BP as the dependent variable, SBP was significantly associated with BMI and age in mothers and fathers. For DBP the only variable entered in the model was BMI for mothers and fathers. When controlling for the children's age, H, W and BMI of children were significantly related to H, W and BMI of mothers and fathers. These results confirm that overweight and a parental history of obesity are predictive and possibly causal factors for essential hypertension.