High blood pressure (hypertension) in children often goes undetected as BP is not routinely checked and age appropriate cut off values are largely unknown or ignored by many physicians.   School screening studies have detected hypertension in children as young as five years of age and have documented an increase in prevalence from early childhood to adolescence. Adolescents are particularly at risk of adopting unhealthy dietary habits and lifestyles due to peer pressure and increasing independence from parental control that may predispose them to a higher risk of obesity, overweight and hypertension.

We undertook to study the prevalence of hypertension in adolescent school children and the association of potential risk factors with it. So far we have accomplished in screening 2644 children from ten schools of Mumbai, Thane and Pune.