Cardiovascular sympathetic nervous activity in overweight healthy adolescents

Overweight adolescents are more likely than lean adolescents to have hypertension in adulthood. Assessment of cardiac sympathetic activity in overweight adolescents will allow to early identification of risk factor for various cardiac complications. This study attempted to compare cardiac sympathetic activity between normal and overweight adolescent subjects as well as to correlate cardiac sympathetic activity with anthropometric measures. Cardiac sympathetic activity was measured by assessing blood pressure response to postural stress and isometric exercise. Percent fat as an index of anthropometric measure was assessed by measuring skin fold thickness. The study concludes that overweight adolescents have a higher resting blood pressure levels than normal weight adolescents that may predispose them to cardiac complications. However, the study did not observe any significant difference altered in cardiovascular sympathetic reactivity in overweight adolescents.