Systolic blood pressure and adiposity: examination by race and gender in a nationally representative sample of young adults.

Background: Adiposity, or more specifically, underlying body fat distribution, has been associated with systolic blood pressure (SBP), and it has been suggested that these associations vary between whites and blacks, as well as by gender.

Methods: Here, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a US study of over 15,000 participants (median age 29.0 years), to characterize the associations between measures of body fat distribution-waist circumference (WC) and WC adjusted for body mass index (BMI) (WC(-bmi))-with SBP within white and black race and gender subgroups.