Effects of gender and age on the relationship between body mass index and Hypertension of Elderlyresidents of Kolkata

More than one billion people are hypertensive worldwide. This makes hypertension a public health issue. Therefore it is important for us to identify the risk factors of hypertension and suggest essential preventive measures to reduce this public health burden. Different studies have revealed that overweight, obesity and dyslipidemia are associated with hypertension. Studies reveal that Body Mass Index has been positively associated with hypertension both systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure (Landi et al., 2018, Tang et al., 2022). Excessive weight gain or visceral fat gain is the most important risk factor of hypertension. Apart from this there may be several other factors like abdominal adiposity, family history, smoking etc. that may be responsible for hypertension. Keeping this backdrop in mind the present study would like to find out the association between Body Mass Index and hypertension of adults residing in Kolkata. The age range of the subjects would be 60 to 70 years and 70 to 80 years. The sample size of the present investigation would be 100, having equal representation from both the age groups and gender groups. The subjects would belong to middle socio economic status families as inferred from their occupations. Height, weight, systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure would be measured. Body Mass Index would be calculated. Descriptive statistics, correlation coefficients and t test would be calculated. Impact of age and gender would be determined on Body Mass Index and hypertension scores of the subjects. The results reveal that there is a positive and significant correlation between the pertinent variables. The results of the t – Test revealed that there is significant difference between the Body Mass Index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure scores within the gender groups. The present study helps us to identify the population at risk and plan different preventive strategies to reduce the level of Body Mass Index and accordingly lower the level of hypertension.