title: Hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea in Caucasian children.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To evaluate the prevalence of hypertension and/or left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) in children with a diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
  
  
  METHODS
  A cross-sectional case series of consecutive, otherwise healthy children aged > 4 years, with polysomnography-proven OSA [apnea hypopnea index (AHI) > 1.5/h] is described. Echocardiography was performed on all subjects and left ventricular mass was calculated. Study subjects underwent additional investigation with 24-h ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Thirty children (21 males) were studied. Mean age was 8.9 years. Mean body mass index was 19.87 kg/cm(2). Mean AHI was 14.3/h. 10/30 (33%) of the study population met criteria for pre-hypertension (n = 3) or masked hypertension (n = 7) based on standard ambulatory monitoring criteria. All 10 children had systolic hypertension throughout the night with 5 of these also having elevated daytime systolic readings. There was a relationship between AHI and BP showing an increase of 1.162 percentile units in mean diastolic night BP (age, gender and height specific) per unit increase in AHI (P = 0.018). There were no subjects with LVH and/or right ventricular hypertrophy.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In our population of otherwise healthy Caucasian children, there was a high prevalence of hypertension that would not have been identified using standard office/clinic protocols.
authors.affiliation: Valerie Kirk, Abdulla Al-Shamrani, Division of Respiratory Medicine, University of Calgary, Alberta Children's Hospital, Calgary, AB T3B 6A8, Canada.
authors.forename: Valerie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kirk
authors.forename: Julian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Midgley
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Giuffre
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ronksley
authors.forename: Alberto
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nettel-Aguirre
authors.forename: Abdulla
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Al-Shamrani