Suffering from elevated blood pressure at age seven may significantly increase the likelihood of premature death from heart disease by middle age, an investigation has revealed.
Scientists have discovered that seven-year-olds with hypertension or elevated blood pressure faced a 40 to 50 per cent greater risk of cardiovascular death by their mid-fifties.
The study, unveiled at the American Heart Association's Hypertension Scientific Sessions in Baltimore and published in JAMA, tracked 38,000 American children for nearly five decades.
It was led by Northwestern University researchers who drew on data from the Collaborative Perinatal Project, America's largest investigation into pregnancy and childhood health factors.
Blood pressure monitoring is a crucial cardiovascular health indicator
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Their findings underscore a pressing need for routine blood pressure monitoring in young children and early intervention to establish heart-healthy behaviours.
The study followed children born between 1959 and 1965 across twelve US sites.
Scientists measured blood pressure when participants reached seven years old, converting readings to age, sex and height-specific percentiles following American Academy of Paediatrics guidelines.
By 2016, when participants averaged 54 years old, 2,837 had died, with 504 deaths attributed to cardiovascular causes.
Children whose blood pressure ranked in the top 10 per cent for their demographic showed the highest mortality risk.
Even moderate blood pressure increases proved significant, with children displaying readings 13 to 18 per cent above average experiencing elevated cardiovascular death risk despite remaining within normal ranges.
"We were surprised to find that high blood pressure in childhood was linked to serious health conditions many years later," said Dr Alexa Freedman, the study's lead author and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.
"Specifically, having hypertension or elevated blood pressure as a child may increase the risk of death by 40 per cent to 50 per cent over the next five decades of an individual's life."
Dr Bonita Falkner, an American Heart Association volunteer expert not involved in the research, said the findings reinforce blood pressure monitoring as a crucial cardiovascular health indicator during childhood.
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Having hypertension during childhood could elevate one's cardiovascular death risk
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The investigation examined 150 sibling groups, revealing that children with higher readings showed increased cardiovascular death risk compared to their brothers and sisters with lower measurements.
This suggests that genetic and environmental factors alone cannot explain the correlation.
Researchers acknowledged several constraints, including reliance on a single blood pressure measurement at age seven, which may not reflect long-term patterns.
The cohort comprised primarily Black and white participants, potentially limiting applicability to other ethnic groups.
Additionally, lifestyle and environmental conditions for children in the 1960s and 1970s differ substantially from today's youth, though American paediatric guidelines currently recommend annual blood pressure checks from age three.