Weight key to fighting blood pressure

LONDON - Staying slim throughout life can help control blood pressure in middle age and reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, researchers say.

Children who grow up in poorer economic conditions and who have a low weight at birth have a higher chance of suffering from high blood pressure later in life.

But scientists from University College London, who studied 3634 men and women from different social and economic backgrounds who were born in Britain in 1946, said maintaining a reasonable weight through life can modify the risk.

"Weight control throughout life is certainly a key to the prevention of raised blood pressure later in life," said Dr Rebecca Hardy, an epidemiologist who led the research.

The scientists compared details of the people's births and the economic and social conditions of their childhood with blood pressure readings that were taken when they were 36, 43 and 53 years old.

Their findings are reported in the Lancet medical journal.

In men and women, low birthweight was linked to higher systolic blood pressure from 36 to 53 years old, but it was not associated with higher diastolic blood pressure.

Systolic is the pressure of the contracting heart and diastolic is the pressure of the resting heart.

People from manual labour backgrounds had higher systolic and diastolic pressure than the other groups, and this increased with age.

The rise in blood pressure was largely a result of increased body mass index (BMI), a measure for calculating overweight and obesity.

"Early social class has an influence on later life blood pressure," Dr Hardy said in an interview.

She added that a better understanding of the link between childhood social class and adult weight could help to develop strategies to control weight and prevent high blood pressure.

Dr Hardy said the findings showed the importance of maintaining a reasonable weight from early in life and the need for earlier interventions. When people in the study were born obesity was uncommon among children, but obesity rates are rising in young people today.

High blood pressure may contribute up to 50 per cent of cases of cardiovascular disease, which kills more than 12 million people worldwide each year, according to the World Health Organisation.

- REUTERS