The relationship between the 24-h blood pressure variability and carotid intima-media thickness: A preliminary study

Abstract

Increased blood pressure variability (BPV) will cause the damage of the target-organ and raise the incidence of cardiovascular events. The change of carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT) usually arises from the damage inside the vascular system, and this factor has been used as one early indicator of arteriosclerosis during clinical practice. In this paper we evaluate the relationship between the BPV and the CIMT in 10 randomized patients (aged 62.7±11.4, 50% men). The blood pressure (BP) was collected using the 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM), and the BPV measured with standard deviation (SD) were calculated in the daytime, nighttime, and whole day, respectively. All the CIMT measurements were collected using Philips iU22 ultrasound system. The results of this preliminary study showed that the daytime systolic blood pressure variability (SBPV) had a positive correlation with the CIMT (r=0.288), and we haven't found any relationship between the CIMT, and the diastolic blood pressure variability (DBPV) and 24-h BPV over current samples. However, we found that the correlation of the BPV and CIMT would increase largely if we exclude the patients with diabetes. We expect to carry on a large-scale investigation over Chinese population in the near future.