Grandparental education, parental education and adolescent blood pressure

Maternal and paternal education could affect childhood blood pressure differently. Grandparental education might also play a role. Disentangling their contribution to childhood blood pressure may shed light on the persistence of disparities and potential windows of intervention.

Using 5604 participants from a Chinese birth cohort born in 1997 and followed-up until ~13years (68% of follow-up), we examined the associations of parental education and grandparental education with age-, sex, and height-specific blood pressure z-scores or prehypertension status.

Parental education was inversely associated with adolescent systolic (-0.11 z-score, equivalent to -1.17mmHg, 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.19 to -0.04 for grade ≥12 compared with grade ≤9) and diastolic blood pressure (-0.07 z-score, equivalent to -0.79mmHg, 95% CI -0.11 to -0.04). The magnitude of association was similar for maternal or paternal education. Grandparental education was not associated with adolescent blood pressure. No association with prehypertension was found.

In an economically developed non-Western setting, both maternal and paternal, but not grandparental, education was associated with adolescent blood pressure. Blood pressure may be responsive to contemporary family socioeconomic conditions that may be scrutinized for suitable interventions.