BLOOD-PRESSURE MORNING SURGE AND HOSTILITY

This study examined the effects of hostility on blood pressure (BP) du ring the early morning hours before awakening and several hours afterw ard. Our objective was to determine whether the pattern of BP change a nd the slope of the morning BP surge were related to hostility. The su bjects were 32 patients with a history of Stage 1 hypertension. The mo rning surge in BP was derived from ambulatory BP monitoring of sleepin g and waking hours, which were averaged per subject and centered aroun d the wake-up hour. The periods used were 3 h before and 3 h after awa kening. Only systolic blood pressure (SEP) is being reported on in thi s paper as this is the primary measure found relevant to the morning s urge phenomenon. Hostility was assessed by the Buss-Durkee Hostility I nventory (total score). The results revealed significant differences b etween low and high hostility subjects for overall levels of sleep SEP : 120 +/- 11.4 mm Hg for low hostility and 131.3 +/- 14.9 mm Hg for hi gh hostility subjects (P = .02). Low hostility subjects showed a steep rise in SEP from sleeping to waking while high hostility subjects had almost reached their post-sleep level of SEP in the hours immediately before waking up (P = .03). These data indicate that individual diffe rences in hostility are related to different patterns of BP during sle ep and the early morning hours, a period of the day that has been asso ciated with an increased risk of cardiovascular incidents. The data al so suggest the need for further study of the significance of hostility and other personality traits and the relationship of these traits to the mechanisms of the morning surge and the risk of cardiovascular eve nts. (C) 1998 American Journal of Hypertension, Ltd.