A heart health journey may start much earlier than once thought, as new research shows that kids with higher blood pressure at age 7 had a sharply increased risk of dying of heart disease by their mid-50s.
The preliminary findings were presented Sunday at an American Heart Association meeting in Baltimore and simultaneously published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The study is the first to examine the impact of both systolic and diastolic blood pressure in childhood on the long-term risk of heart-related death across a diverse group of children.
Systolic blood pressure, the top number in a blood pressure reading, is the force exerted in arteries while the heart is beating. Diastolic pressure is force between beats.
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