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Correlation between beat-to-beat blood pressure variability and arterial stiffness in healthy adults in the cold pressor test

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Abstract

Blood pressure variability has a great effect on the progression of arterial stiffness, which has increasingly become a hot research topic recently. In this study, beat-to-beat recordings of blood pressure (BP), heart rate, cardiac output, total peripheral resistance, and left ventricular ejection time during the cold pressor test (CPT) were analyzed together. We recruited 101 young Chinese subjects (aged 21–33) with no known history of high BP into the study. We found that the mean level of beat-to-beat BP and the average real variability and successive variation of beat-to-beat diastolic BP variability in the CPT showed significant correlations with pulse wave velocity (PWV) (r = 0.22–0.34, P < 0.05). In addition, we also found correlations between beat-to-beat heart rate and heart rate variability indices and PWV in each phase of the CPT. At the same time, the standard deviation of the R–R intervals and square root of the mean squared difference of successive R–R intervals in the cold stimulus phase also showed significant correlations with PWV (r = 0.23–0.24, P < 0.05). In conclusion, the level and variability of beat-to-beat BP have a strong influence on arterial stiffness.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported partly by the Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2013A022100036, 2014A020212257), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (201003745), Shenzhen innovation funding (JCYJ20140901003939025), Guangdong Image-guided Therapy Innovation Team (2011S013) and the Key Lab for Health Informatics of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Cardiology, Guangzhou General Hospital of Guangzhou Military Region, PLA, Guangzhou, 510010, China

      Lin Xu, Hongqiang Lei, Jian Qiu, Jun Ma, Hui Zhao & Yu Deng

    2. Fourth Military Medical University, Xi’an, 710032, China

      Hongqiang Lei

    3. Institute of Biomedical and Health Engineering, Guangzhou, 518055, China

      Wan-Hua Lin

    4. Institute of Clinical Anatomy, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China

      Wenhua Huang

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    1. Lin Xu
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    Correspondence to Wan-Hua Lin.

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    Lin Xu, Hongqiang Lei and Jian Qiu have contributed equally to this work.

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    Xu, L., Lei, H., Qiu, J. et al. Correlation between beat-to-beat blood pressure variability and arterial stiffness in healthy adults in the cold pressor test. Australas Phys Eng Sci Med 39, 977–985 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-015-0378-x

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