Handgrip Strength Is Not Associated With High Blood Pressure and Does Not Have Good Discriminatory Power for High Blood Pressure in Adolescents

• Published in: Journal of strength and conditioning research Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 46 - 54
• Main Authors: de Lima, Tiago Rodrigues, Silva, Diego Augusto Santos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 01-01-2023; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Ovid Technologies
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adolescents; Blood pressure; Blood Pressure - physiology; Body mass; Body weight; Child; Cross-Sectional Studies; Female; Hand Strength - physiology; Humans; Hypertension; Hypertension - diagnosis; Male; Medical diagnosis; Muscle strength; Overweight; Pediatrics; Physical fitness; Teenagers
• ISSN: 1064-8011; 1533-4287
• DOI: 10.1519/JSC.0000000000004388

de Lima, TR and Silva, DAS. Handgrip strength is not associated with high blood pressure and does not have good discriminatory power for high blood pressure in adolescents. J Strength Cond Res 37(1): 46-54, 2023-Muscle strength measured by handgrip strength (HGS) was inversely and independently associated with high blood pressure (HBP). In addition, HGS has been used as a valuable indicator for monitoring pediatric health. This study aimed to investigate the association between HGS indexes and HBP, verify the discriminatory capacity of HGS to identify HBP in adolescents, and propose cut-points for HGS to be used in the early identification of HBP if good discriminatory power is identified between the variables. This was a cross-sectional study comprising 811 adolescents (male: 48.9%; age: 16.4 ± 1.3 years) from southern Brazil. Blood pressure was measured by the oscillometric method. Handgrip strength was assessed by a hand dynamometer and 3 different approaches were adopted: (a) HGS in kilogram-force, (b) normalized HGS (HGS/body mass), and (c) allometric HGS (HGS/body mass-0.67). Binary logistic regression was used to verify the association between HGS indexes and HBP, and the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) was used to determine the possible use of HGS as a diagnostic tool for HBP. Handgrip strength indexes were not associated with HBP (p > 0.05), and ROC analyses showed a nonsignificant discriminating accuracy for most of the HGS indexes analyzed (p > 0.05) in identifying HBP in boys and girls. The area under curve (AUC) values ranged from 0.499 (95% CI [0.403-0.596] for allometric HGS among overweight or obese boys) to 0.595 (95% CI [0.546-0.643] for HGS among boys). Handgrip strength was not associated with HBP, and its use in the screening of HBP in adolescents is not recommended.