title: Improving Hypertension Screening in Childhood Using Modified Blood Pressure to Height Ratio.
abstract: Blood pressure to height ratio (BPHR) has been suggested as a simple method for screening children with hypertension, but its discriminatory ability in young children is not as good as that in older children. Using data of 89,664 Chinese children aged 7 to 11 years, the authors assessed whether modified BPHR (BP:eHT13) was better than BPHR in identifying young children with hypertension. BP:eHT13 was estimated as BP/(height+7×(13-age in years)). Using Youden's index, the thresholds of systolic/diastolic BP:eHT13 for identifying prehypertension and hypertension were 0.67/0.44 and 0.69/0.45, respectively. These proposed thresholds revealed high sensitivity, specificity, negative predictive value, and area under the curve (AUC), ranging from 0.874 to 0.999. In addition, BP:eHT13 showed better AUCs and fewer cutoff points than, if not similar to, two existing BPHR references. BP:eHT13 generally performed better than BPHR in discriminating BP abnormalities in young children and may improve early hypertension recognition and control.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.|Centre for Chronic Disease, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.|Centre for Chronic Disease, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld, Australia.
authors.forename: Zhiqiang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Hai-Jun
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Child and Adolescent Health, School of Public Health, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ma
mesh_terms: D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology*; D001795:Blood Pressure Determination / Q000379:methods*; D001827:Body Height / Q000502:physiology*; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006973:Hypertension / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods