Influence of some cardiovascular risk factors on the rela-tionship between age and blood pressure

TL;DR

This study investigates how cardiovascular risk factors influence the relationship between age and blood pressure in hypertensive and normotensive individuals, revealing that risk factors modify this relationship especially in hypertensive subjects.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how specific risk factors alter the age-BP relationship using both office and ambulatory measurements in a large sample.

Findings

Hypertensive subjects show steeper BP/Age slopes than normotensive subjects.

Risk factors modify the BP/Age relationship in hypertensive individuals.

Differences between office and ambulatory BP measurements depend on age.

Abstract

Blood Pressure (BP) is a biological signal related to the cardiovascular system that inevitably is affected by ageing. Moreover, it is also influenced by the presence of cardiovascular risk factors. To evaluate how the relationship be-tween BP and age changes with the presence of risk factors in hypertensive and normotensive subjects, we analyzed 880 subjects with and without smoking, obe-sity, diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia. A regression line fitted each BP/Age relation calculated separately for normotensive and hypertensive subjects with and without risk factors. For each of the four conditions the office and the 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) were considered. In subjects with and without risk factors, the slopes of the Systolic BP/Age relation were higher in hypertensive than in normotensive subjects in both office and ABPM conditions. Moreover, the presence of risk factors modified the Systolic BP/Age relation in hypertensive subjects by using either office or ABPM measurements. Finally, we confirmed that the difference between the two modalities depends on age too.