Prevalência de press？o arterial elevada em crian？as e adolescentes do ensino fundamental

objective: to assess the prevalence of elevated blood pressure in schoolchildren and adolescents and the association of blood pressure with anthropometric measures. methods: this cross-sectional study, conducted in three schools in botucatu, brazil, collected blood pressure (bp) measurements taken at three different time points and anthropometric data: weight, height, body mass index (bmi), arm circumference, waist circumference, triceps and subscapular skinfolds. blood pressure was measured using the auscultation method, and children were classified into two groups: pre-hypertension or hypertension for values between the 90th and 95th percentiles or above the 95th percentile. data were compared according to sex using the student's t test. the pearson correlation coefficient was used to evaluate the association between blood pressure and anthropometric data. to evaluate blood pressure, the z score according to bmi percentile categories, one-factor analysis of variance (anova) and the tukey post hoc test were used. results: this study evaluated 903 children and adolescents (51.7% boys) whose mean age was 9.3±2.5 years. the prevalence of pre-hypertension and hypertension was 9.1% and 2.9%. there was a positive correlation between both systolic and diastolic blood pressure and anthropometric variables, especially for weight (r=0.53 and r=0.45, p<0.05) and waist circumference (r=0.50 and r=0.38, p<0.05). conclusions: the prevalence of elevated blood pressure in this study was similar to what has been reported in international and national studies. a positive correlation with abnormal anthropometric measures was found. these results suggest that overweight affects blood pressure already in childhood.