Comparison of Cardiovascular Parameters and Cardiac Autonomic Activity of Obese and Normal Weight School Children in Puducherry.

Background and Aim: Worldwide, incidence of childhood obesity is on the rising trend and obese children are more vulnerable to various health disorders. This study was done to assess and compare the cardiovascular parameters and Heart rate variability (HRV) parameters of obese school children with children with normal Body Mass Index (BMI).

Methods: Thirty obese children (BMI  95th percentile) aged 9-12 years and 30 age and sex matched children with normal BMI (BMI 5th to below 85th percentile) were included in test and control groups respectively. Mann Whitney U test was done to detect the difference between the two groups with respect to systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and HRV parameters. Sub-analyses were also done to compare the data of boys of control and test groups and the data of girls of control and test groups.

Results: SBP, DBP and Mean arterial pressure (MAP) were significantly high in the test group. However, there was no significant difference between test and control groups with respect to HRV parameters. Subanalyses revealed that the obese boys had a significantly high SBP, DBP, MAP, rate pressure product (RPP) and a significantly low total HRV while the obese girls had a significantly raised SDNN, RMSSD, pNN50, LF power, HF power and total HRV.

Conclusion: The obese children had a significantly raised blood pressure. There was no difference in the HRV parameters of normal weight and obese children. However, obese boys had a significantly reduced total HRV when compared to normal weight boys while the obese girls had a significantly raised total HRV when compared to normal weight girls. The various physiological changes during puberty and the time of onset of puberty may have a varying impact on the cardiac autonomic status of obese male and female children.