Association of fitness and waist circumference with hypertension in Brazilian elderly women.

BACKGROUND The protective effect of cardiorespiratory fitness, regardless of obesity, has been recognized in adults. However, this association is still not clear in elderly individuals. OBJECTIVE To analyze the association between hypertension and cardiorespiratory fitness in 1,064 elderly Brazilian women. METHODS Central obesity was estimated by waist circumference and cardiorespiratory fitness by the 6-minutes walk test. ANOVA one way, chi-square and logistic regression were used for the statistical analysis. RESULTS The prevalence of hypertension was 53.9%. The central obesity group had higher odds for hypertension when compared with the non-central-obesity group, in the same cardiorespiratory fitness group. Furthermore, both the central obesity and non-central obesity groups had a progressive increase in the odds ratio for hypertension, from the highest to lowest fitness groups, indicating an inverse relation between fitness and central adiposity. The non-central obesity group had the lowest odds ratios (OR), 1.49 (95%IC 0.97-2.28) and 1.54 (95%IC 0.94-2.51); whereas the central obesity group had an OR of 2.08 (95%IC 1.47-2.93), 2.79 (95%IC 1.79-4.33) and 3.09 (95%IC 1.86-5.12). CONCLUSION Our findings indicated that the waist circumference measurement is a strong predictor of hypertension and suggested that the protective effect of cardiorespiratory fitness can be extended to elderly women, even to those with central obesity.