Alcohol consumption and blood pressure in school children

The present report focuses on the relationship between alcohol consumption, estimated with the use of a seven day food record, and blood pressure in a group of 203 male and female school children with a mean age of 11 year. 50.5% of the male and 39.4% of the female children reported use of alcoholic beverages. The average weekly ethanol consumption in these regular drinkers was 73.9 ml/week for boys and 53.1 ml/week for girls. The results of the analyses fail to show any significant association between alcohol consumption and blood pressure levels. The possibility of the association between alcohol and hypertension being dependent on advanced age is discussed in view of the present results and previously published reports.