News - Hypertension Week of Sept 14, 2003/ Vol. 2 No. 37

Researchers Seek Link Between Obesity and High Blood Pressure in Adolescents

Researchers at the Medical College of Georgia will use a $1.4 million grant from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to find out whether obesity contributes to high blood pressure in adolescents.

Lead researcher Gregory Harshfield will study 160 lean and overweight adolescents to determine whether such a link exists. He speculated that the way obese people handle sodium could be the culprit, noting that the kidneys routinely hold onto sodium when people are under stress and their blood pressure naturally rises because of it.

But when the stress subsides, the kidneys do not eliminate the sodium in obese people as they do in normal weight people, allowing blood pressure to remain elevated for prolonged periods of time and leading to hypertension.

Harshfield's studies have shown this mechanism is impaired in about 30 percent of adolescent blacks and 15 percent of adolescent whites.

"How stress interacts with fat in the production of damage to the kidneys is what we are looking at primarily," said Harshfield. "I think what we are going to see is that in the high-fat kids, the stress will produce greater sodium retention and longer levels of elevated blood pressure."

Other sources: Medical College of Georgia