Grandparental education, parental education and adolescent blood pressure.
Maternal and paternal education could affect childhood blood pressure differently. Grandparental education might also play a role. Disentangling their contribution to childhood blood pressure may shed light on the persistence of disparities and potential windows of intervention.



Using 5604 participants from a Chinese birth cohort born in 1997 and followed-up until ~13years (68% of follow-up), we examined the associations of parental education and grandparental education with age-, sex, and height-specific blood pressure z-scores or prehypertension status.



Parental education was inversely associated with adolescent systolic (-0.11 z-score, equivalent to -1.17mmHg, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.19 to -0.04 for grade ≥12 compared with grade ≤9) and diastolic blood pressure (-0.07 z-score, equivalent to -0.79mmHg, 95% CI -0.11 to -0.04). The magnitude of association was similar for maternal or paternal education. Grandparental education was not associated with adolescent blood pressure. No association with prehypertension was found.



In an economically developed non-Western setting, both maternal and paternal, but not grandparental, education was associated with adolescent blood pressure. Blood pressure may be responsive to contemporary family socioeconomic conditions that may be scrutinized for suitable interventions.
School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Man Ki
MK
Kwok
School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region; City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, New York, United States. Electronic address: cms1@hkucc.hku.hk.
C Mary
CM
Schooling
School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Gabriel M
GM
Leung
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, United States.
Subu V
SV
Subramanian
D000293:Adolescent; D001794:Blood Pressure / Q000502:physiology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016901:Intergenerational Relations; D008297:Male; D010290:Parents / Q000193:education*; D012307:Risk Factors; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors
Blood pressure; Child; Cohort studies; Grandparental education; Parental education; Socioeconomic position