AMBULATORY-DETERMINED 24-HOUR BLOOD-PRESSURE IN MILD HYPERTENSIVES AND IN NORMOTENSIVES

Noninvasive ambulatory twenty-four-hour blood pressure (BP) monitoring was carried out in 30 normotensive subjects (16 women, 14 men), aged twenty-five to sixty years (mean thirty-eight) and in 29 mild essentia l hypertensive patients without target organ damage (14 women, 15 men) , aged twenty-three to sixty-one years (mean thirty-nine). Hypertensiv e patients were not treated, and they discontinued any antihypertensiv e treatment at least four weeks before the study. During the daytime p eriod (6 AM-10 PM) BP was monitored every fifteen minutes, and during the night (10 PM-6 AM), every thirty minutes. Obviously, mean twenty-f our-hour systolic blood pressure (SEP) and diastolic blood pressure (D BP) were higher in hypertensive patients (P < 0.001). There was a pers istent correlation in the group of mild hypertensives between successi ve BP hourly mean readings (r ranged from 0.61 to 0.93 for SBP and fro m 0.45 to 0.82 for DBP). In normotensive subjects these correlations f ailed in particular periods: 8 AM-9 AM, r = 0.30 for SEP and 0.45 for DBP; 1 PM-3 PM, r = 0.17-0.49 for SEP and 0.28-0.37 for DBP; 9 PM to m idnight, r = 0.21-0.57 for SEP and 0.23-0.38 for DBP.