**1. Introduction**

Obesity is a key global public health alarm with about 500 million people worldwide affected [1, 2]. In epidemiological studies, anthropometric parameters, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), neck circumference (NC) and waist-height ratio (WHtR) are often used as measures of obesity [2–5]. Obesity as directly measured by anthropometric technique has been demonstrated to be associated with hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus, common risk factors for CVD [6, 7].

The diagnosis of diabetes is often based on a fasting plasma glucose, random plasma glucose, a 2-hour plasma glucose value in a 75g oral glucose tolerance test or a glycated hemoglobin (A1C) measurement, but generally on fasting plasma glucose, partly because of its better sensitivity to diagnose diabetes [5, 8]. Hypertension uses information about systolic blood pressure (SBP) and/or diastolic blood pressure (DBP) to derive an estimate for diagnosis [9].

In view of the burden of obesity, hypertension and diabetes and their impact on children and the scarcity of information on the relationship of blood glucose, blood pressure with anthropometric parameters in rural South African communities, more especially in Ellisras, the present study aimed to determine the relationship of blood pressure and blood glucose with anthropometric parameters among Ellisras rural children aged 6 to 11 years and to determine which of the anthropometric parameters is associated with greater odds of high blood pressure and high blood glucose levels in this population.
