The relationship between morning blood pressure surge with carotid artery intima-media thickness in elderly hypertensive patients

Objective To study the relationship between morning blood pressure surge with carotid artery intima-media thickness in good controlled elderly hypertensive patients.Methods A total of 151well controlled elderly hypertensive patients was selected in this study.Through the ABPM examination,the morning blood pressure peak was calculated,and then these patients were divided into two groups according to the morning blood pressure peak.The patients whose morning blood pressure peak ≤30 mmHg were divided into non-morning blood pressure surge group (NMS group),and the patients whose morning blood pressure peak ＞ 30 mmHg were divided into morning blood pressure surge group (MS group).The carotid IMT of these patients was measured with ultrasonic detection.The hypertension-related factors with blood pressure and morning peak phenomenon and the impact of IMT were analyzed,and the relationship between the morning blood pressure peak and IMT was analyzed with linear regression analysis.Results Two groups of 151 cases were well-controlled hypertension,76 patients with morning blood pressure showed peak phenomenon,accounting for 50.3％.Age,gender,body mass index,blood lipids,blood glucose,the maximum systolic blood pressure,average systolic blood pressure,minimum systolic blood pressure,maximum diastolic blood pressure,average diastolic blood pressure and minimum diastolic blood pressure had no difference between the two groups ( P ＞ 0.05 ).However,the morning blood pressure peak in patients with MS group [ (42.34 ± 7.10)mmHg] and IMT [ (0.89 ± 0.13 )mm] was higher than the NMS group [ (21.16 ±5.23) mmHg,(0.84 ±0.14) mm,P ＜0.01 orP ＜0.05],and carotid IMT and peak morning blood pressure was positively correlated ( r =0.56,P ＜0.01 ).Conclusions Good controlled elderly hypertensive patients remained the phenomenon of the morning blood pressure surge,the morning blood pressure peak might lead to carotid atherosclerosis. Key words: Hypertension/PA/PP;  Blood pressure;  Carotid arteries/PA