Hypertension in Children May Decrease Their Cognitive Ability

The demands that development and education put on children’s brains are great. A great number of these children are obese and 10% of those obese children have hypertension. A recent study found that children with hypertension are not as adept at completing complicated, goal-orientated tasks and had more trouble with memory problems as those without hypertension. It was also concluded that children suffering from both hypertension and obesity were more likely to have anxiety and depression.

High blood pressure can lead to stroke, heart disease, heart failure, and kidney failure in an adult. Marc Lande, M.D., a pediatric nephrologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, postulated that cognitive changes in the children with hypertension represents very early signs of hypertensive damage to the brain, which may lead to other obvious damage such as a stroke. The findings found by the study were surprising to Lande who stated that similar results are found in adults but they “often have other problems that might affect cognition such as chronic disease, smoking or alcohol use. However children with hypertension usually do not have these comorbidities.”

After finding a correlation between high blood pressure and lower scores on cognitive tests in survey conducted from 1988 to 1997 called NHANES III, the National Health and Nutrition Examination, Lande was inspired to do the study on 32 hypertensive volunteers within the age of 10 to 18 years old in a study. Although the hypertensive group did not perform poorly enough to arouse great clinical concern, the results were much more different than the non-hypertensive group. More than half the children with hypertension and obesity exhibited signs of anxiety and depression. Anxiety and depression were initially studied only to rule out its relationship with executive function or a collection of cognitive abilities that help plan and respond to complex situations. Lande did expect to find that children with only obesity or only hypertension did not suffer with the anxiety and depression that children with both obesity and hypertension did.

Further research will hopefully be able to conclude whether treating hypertension could improve their cognitive abilities indicating that the changes in cognition associated with hypertension is reversible with the normalizing of blood pressure.