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Age and sex-specific relationships between blood pressure variability and carotid intima-media thickness

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Abstract

This study evaluated the association between carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) and 24 h ambulatory blood pressure variability (BPV) in 150 subjects. The subjects were divided into different age groups and gender groups. We found that for the subjects aged less than 45 years, 24 h and daytime diastolic BPV were associated with the increased IMT (r = 0.525, P = 0.018; r = 0.507, P = 0.022). For the middle aged people (46–55 years), daytime (r = 0.377, P = 0.014) and 24 h systolic BPV (r = 0.366, P = 0.017) were more related to the increases in IMT than 24 h diastolic BPV (r = 0.320, P = 0.039). However, no association between carotid IMT and BPV was found in the elderly (>55 years). In addition, the relationships between carotid IMT and BPV were more obvious in males than females. 24 h systolic BPV (P = 0.008) is the independent factor to evaluate the increased carotid IMT for males, but not for females. The findings in our study indicated that age and sex had influences on progression of carotid IMT. We conclude that the relationship between carotid IMT and ambulatory BPV can be modified by age and sex, thus, the regression model using BPV to evaluate the arteriosclerotic progression should take age and sex into account.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the Guangdong Innovation Research Team Fund for Low-cost Health-care Technologies in China, the Key Lab for Health Informatics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Enhancing Program of Key Laboratories of Shenzhen City (ZDSY20120617113021359), and Shenzhen Innovation Funding (JCYJ20140414170821190).

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No conflict of interest stated for all authors.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Cardiac Electrophysiology Room, The Second Peoples’ Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China

      Xiaohong Tian

    2. Department of Ultrasound, The Second Peoples’ Hospital of Shenzhen, Shenzhen, China

      Huahua Xiong

    3. Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

      Dan Wu & Yuan-Ting Zhang

    4. Key Lab for Health Informatics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

      Dan Wu & Yuan-Ting Zhang

    5. Shenzhen College of Advanced Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China

      Dan Wu

    6. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Health Science Center, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

      Ruiqin Zhang & Minhua Lu

    7. Joint Research Center for Biomedical Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong

      Yuan-Ting Zhang

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    1. Xiaohong Tian
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    Correspondence to Dan Wu.

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    Xiaohong Tian and Huahua Xiong have contributed equally to this work.

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    Tian, X., Xiong, H., Wu, D. et al. Age and sex-specific relationships between blood pressure variability and carotid intima-media thickness. Australas Phys Eng Sci Med 39, 967–976 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-015-0361-6

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-015-0361-6

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