More than a quarter of adult men and women had hypertension in 2000 and the prevalence is especially high in African Americans. This proposal investigates the developmental origins of high blood pressure in the Dogon, an undernourished population in Mali, West Africa. Dogon children have a high prevalence of hypertension, but also a high prevalence of stunting and underweight. The PI has studied the Dogon for 25 years and established a prospective, cohort study of child growth in 1998 (N = 1700). The study includes the total population of children age 0 to 5 years in 9 villages in the initial year, with the addition of all children born in the subsequent two years (1999 and 2000).
The proposed study has four specific aims: (1) To test the hypothesis that postnatal growth is a risk factor for high blood pressure during childhood and adolescence and to determine the ages at which the pace of growth is most important, (2) To test the hypothesis that early maturation (young age at puberty or menarche) predicts elevated blood pressure due to the underlying association between maturation and body size (weight, height, BMI); (3) To establish a birth weight registry for infants born to girls in the study; and (4) To test the alternative developmental hypothesis that children who live in villages with clean well water have lower blood pressure than children who suffered chronically from diarrhea and dehydration from drinking contaminated stream water.