Background: Effective cardiovascular disease prevention requires strategies aimed at those children and adolescents most at risk. This study was designed to identify adolescents with clustering of higher levels of cardiovascular risk factors related to diet, blood pressure, fitness, fatness and blood cholesterol.
Methods: A representative sample of 555 schoolchildren aged 15 years from the Perth, Australia metropolitan area, was included in a cross-sectional survey analysing relationships between nutrient intake, fitness, physical activity, percentage of body fat, blood pressure and heart rate.
Results: Cluster analysis identified 21.1% of boys and 20.7% of girls with significantly worse risk profiles. Higher cardiovascular risk was associated with both dietary excesses, particularly in fat, cholesterol and sodium intake, and deficiencies of a number of minerals, vitamins and dietary fibre. Socioeconomic status was inversely associated with cardiovascular risk and undernutrition in girls.
Conclusions: The analysis has identified a subgroup of about 21% of 15-year-old schoolchildren who share features of a range of unhealthy lifestyle variables, putting them at substantial risk of cardiovascular disease and other ill health in later life.