Senior medical professionals are urging the introduction of a nationwide programme to check schoolchildren's blood pressure, amid warnings that soaring rates in adolescents will fuel a future crisis of organ damage, strokes, and heart attacks.
A Silent Epidemic Among the Young
Rates of high blood pressure have nearly doubled among children in the UK over the last two decades. Despite this alarming trend, there is currently no routine testing in place, leaving doctors unaware of the full scale of the problem and which young people are most at risk.
Experts argue that identifying teenagers with hypertension would allow GPs to step in early, potentially reducing the danger of organ damage and life-threatening cardiovascular disease as these individuals reach their 30s and 40s.
"We need to find out how bad the problem is, and that means finding a way to measure blood pressure in children who are still at school," stated Professor Manish Sinha, a consultant paediatric nephrologist at the Evelina London children’s hospital.
"The fundamental issue is that people don’t recognise that hypertension can be a childhood problem. We have a more unhealthy childhood population, and hypertension puts them at greater risk of events like kidney disease, stroke and heart attack earlier in their adult lives," he added.
From Screen Time to Health Decline
While high blood pressure in very young children is often linked to underlying medical conditions, doctors are now seeing a surge in cases among teenagers directly connected to lifestyle factors. These include excess weight, poor nutrition, and critically, a severe lack of physical exercise.
Professor Igor Rudan, co-head of the Centre for Global Health at the University of Edinburgh, highlighted the dramatic shift in young people's habits. "The digital age has brought about changes in how children spend their time that we haven’t seen in the history of humanity," he said. "Traditionally, kids were playing with each other outside as much as possible, but now parents just give them a screen. That’s a complete shift."
He warned that the combination of inactivity from digital devices and poorer nutrition is creating a perfect storm. "We see plenty of obese children and they are getting hypertension at eight times the rate of other children."
A Preventable Burden on the NHS
High blood pressure can silently damage the body for years, weakening arteries and straining the heart, before any symptoms appear. The long-term consequences are severe.
Research from Canada illustrates the growing global issue: childhood and adolescent hypertension rose from 1.3% in the 1990s to 6% in the 2010s. A study of over 25,000 hypertensive teenagers found their risk of kidney disease or failure was three times higher than their peers with healthy blood pressure over a 14-year period.
Dr Emily Haseler of King’s College London cautioned that the rising trend threatens to become a significant additional burden on the NHS and could damage UK productivity as more people of working age suffer the effects.
Juliet Bouverie, chief executive of the Stroke Association, noted an "alarming surge" in strokes among people of working age and expressed deep concern about more children developing high blood pressure, a leading cause of stroke. "Childhood is an opportunity to teach and establish healthy living patterns," she said.
Proposals for intervention include integrating blood pressure checks into the existing National Child Measurement Programme or creating a new NHS adolescent health check. Targeted screening for high-risk groups, such as those with a family history or who are overweight, is another suggested approach.
Professor Ian Wilkinson, president of the British and Irish Hypertension Society, criticised the current strategy. "What we’re currently doing is waiting for people to get to 40 or 50, waiting for their blood pressure to rise, and then treating them. We are ignoring younger people." He described the situation as a "national health emergency."
However, experts offer a note of hope: helping children may be easier than treating adults. "In kids, you have so much more opportunity to get them back on track," Professor Rudan concluded, emphasising the critical window for prevention.
