The Relation between Blood Pressure and Body Mass Index in Iranian School Age Children

Background: association between body mass indexes (bmi)and blood pressure have been observed, but remains poorlyunderstood. bmi is shown to be a measure of overweightstatus and is applicable to all populations. in this crosssectionalstudy we have examined the relationship between thebmi and blood pressure in school age children.methods: this study comprised of 486 boys and 463 girls ataged from 7 to 14-yrs, we examined the age-adjusted relationshipbetween systolic (sbp) and diastolic (dbp) blood pressuresand bmi in three age groups of 7, 11 and 14-yrs. bmiwas calculated by dividing the body weight in kg by thesquare of height in meters (m). at first multiple regressionanalyses were separately used for sbp and dbp to establishtheir association with bmi, age, gender and height. the analysestestwas then repeated by replacing bmi by adjusted bm!.result: sbp and dbp were positively and significantly relatedto bmi (p(less than)o.ol). according to multivariate regressionanalysis, sbp and dpb showed significant associations withage and weight with respective relation coefficient of 0.569and 0.469 for bmi, sbp and dbp.conclusion: the results of this study showed that bmi washighly associated and linearly related with both systolic anddiastolic blood pressures in iranian school-age children.