Smoking Parents May Be Responsible for Their Child's Hypertension

In Germany, five-year-olds have a compulsory physical exam and cognitive testing before they start school. This offers opportunities for early correction if there are findings that may predict health troubles later in life. An example of this is given in a report in the online version of the journal Circulation.

The study, which was conducted in Germany, comprised data from 4,236 preschool children; their average age was 5.7 years. With the focus of interest on high blood pressure in the child, a number of family-related factors - prenatal, environmental, and hereditary - were measured. 

Twenty-eight percent of fathers and 21% of mothers smoked, with both parents smoking in 12% of cases. Analyses showed that parental smoking was independently associated with the systolic blood pressure levels in children, even after correction for other risk factors, such as BMI, parental high blood pressure or birth weight. Thus there was an increased likelihood that a child would have blood pressure readings in the top 15% of all those tested if one or both parents smoked.

Smoking by a parent was not the only association with raised blood pressure in the child, or even the strongest. Parents who were overweight and had a history of hypertension in their family were even more likely to have children with high blood pressure. But as the chief investigator in this study stated, smoking is probably the easiest parental risk factor to modify.

Of course, high blood pressure in a child presents little immediate risk of cardiovascular disease, but if it persists into adulthood it is a major contributor. This study provides a good example of the need to consider taking preventive steps against chronic diseases in good time, often even in childhood.