Overweight, obesity and systemic arterial hypertension in the elderly: a literature review

Abstract

Aging is composed by morphological changes, such as excessive fat accumulation, wich makes the elderly more prone to comorbities development, as Systemic Arterial Hypertension (SAH), that provides a greater risk for unfavorable health outcomes. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate the association between overweight/obesity and SAH in the elderly. This is an integrative literature review, made in the Latin American and Caribbean databases on Health Sciences and Scientific Electronic Library Online. There were 470 scientific manuscripts. Wich four of then selected for review. The studied populations ranged from 477 to 963 elderly people, with a avegare age between 65.0 ± 9.0 and 73.0 ± 8.9 years. The overweight/obesity prevalence ranged from 34.2 to 77.4%, while that of arterial hypertension, from 62.8 to 76.8%. It was observed, in one of the studies, that obese elderly were 3.85 times more likely to be hypertensive, when compared to eutrophic individuals. Another study showed that elderly women and elderly people with hypertension had, respectively, an average body mass index of 3.22 and 2.27 kg/m² higher than non-hypertensive individuals. Furthermore, there was a prevalence of hypertension 40% higher among obese elderly people than those with normal weight. There was a high prevalence of arterial hypertension and overweight/obesity, as well as associations between these conditions in the elderly evaluated. Thus, it’s essential to adopt health surveillance actions, such as monitoring nutritional status, in order to screen elderly people who are more vulnerable to SAH and its possible complications.