Relationship between fat patterns, physical fitness and blood pressure of rural South African children: Ellisras Longitudinal Growth and Health Study

The present study investigated the relationship between blood pressure (BP), fat patterns and fitness parameters of Ellisras children aged 7-13 years. Furthermore, an assessment of body fat patterns was done to determine the subjects with the highest risk of overweight, hypertension and waist-to-hip ratio above the 90th percentile. Data were collected from 1817 subjects (938 boys and 879 girls), aged 7-13 years, participating in the Ellisras Longitudinal Study. Anthropometric measurements were taken according to the standard procedure of the International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry. The EUROFIT test items were used to test the physical fitness of 1192 subjects (634 boys and 558 girls). Obesity was defined using the international recommended cutoff points for body mass index (BMI) in children. Hypertension was defined as the occurrence of BP levels greater or equal to the 95th percentile of height-and sex-adjusted reference levels. The prevalence of hypertension ranged from 1 to 11.4% and that of overweight 0.6-4.6%. Waist girth, BMI, triceps and subscapular skinfold showed significant (P<0.001-0.05) correlation with other fat pattern parameters (r ranging from -0.157 to 0.978) compared with significant correlations (P<0.001-0.05) with BP (r ranging from -0.071 to 0.164). Children with waist girth greater than the 90th percentile are more likely to have multiple risk factors than the children with a waist girth that is less than or equal to the 90th percentile. Longitudinal studies should verify whether changes in waist girth and skinfolds will indicate changes in cardiovascular risk factors during growth.