The effects of age, gender, and family history on blood pressure of normotensive college students

Interactive effects of avoidant coping and parental hypertension on Rate Pressure Product reactivity in women

BACKGROUND

Previous research suggests that personality, situational context variables, and genes might interact to potentiate cardiovascular stress responses.

PURPOSE

Our purpose is to examine interactive effects of dispositional avoidant coping and parental hypertension on cardiovascular reactivity to three different laboratory stressors.

METHOD

Participants were 63 healthy female students. Stressors were an evaluated videotaped speech, the cold pressor, and viewing of the speech video. Heart rate and blood pressure were continuously recorded during baselines and tasks.

RESULTS

After controlling for age, body mass index, smoking status, reported exercise, alcohol consumption, oral contraceptive use, parental hypertension, and avoidant coping, the interaction term of parental hypertension and avoidant coping was the best predictor of rate pressure product (RPP) reactivity to the speech task and to the video-viewing task. In contrast, reactivity to the cold pressor was not significantly predicted by this interaction term. Furthermore, there were no significant main effects of parental hypertension and avoidant coping on RPP reactivity in any of the tasks. There were no significant interactive effects for diastolic blood pressure.

CONCLUSIONS

Consistent with an interactive model of cardiovascular reactivity, parental hypertension plus avoidant coping led to enhanced RPP reactivity. This effect, however, was only evident during self-threatening stressors. The results suggest that the coincidence of genetic and personality factors might enhance risk for cardiovascular diseases.

The role of parental hypertension in the frequency and age of diagnosis of hypertension in offspring with autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease

BACKGROUND

Hypertension in autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) patients is associated with more rapid progression of renal disease and a high incidence of left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH). The present study was undertaken to examine the role of parental hypertension in the occurrence of hypertension in 475 ADPKD offspring.

METHODS

Adult subjects participating in an ongoing study of the natural history of ADPKD were included in the analysis if they were diagnosed with ADPKD, had a known affected parent, and knew the hypertensive status of both parents.

RESULTS

When the affected parent was hypertensive, the ADPKD male (82% versus 62%, P < 0.05) and female (61% versus 37%, P < 0.005) offspring had a significantly higher frequency of hypertension than when the ADPKD-affected parent was normotensive. The median age of diagnosis of hypertension was also significantly earlier in both male (33 years versus 40 years, P < 0.05) and female (38 years versus 50 years, P < 0.05) ADPKD patients when their affected parents were hypertensive as compared with normotensive. These effects of hypertension in the affected parent on hypertension in the ADPKD offspring were independent of age, renal volume, and renal function in the offspring. Hypertension in unaffected parents also increased the frequency of hypertension in the ADPKD female (69% versus 53%, P < 0.01), but not male (89% versus 77%, NS) subjects.

CONCLUSION

The results indicate that parental hypertension influences the frequency of hypertension in ADPKD patients.

Cardiovascular recovery from stress predicts longitudinal changes in blood pressure

Cardiovascular reactivity and recovery were examined as predictors of blood pressure changes over 3 years. Blood pressure and heart rate readings were obtained from 73 men and women aged 18-20 years during cold pressor, mental arithmetic, tourniquet ischemia, cycle exercise and step exercise tasks. Regression analyses indicated that after adjustment for initial blood pressure, initial age, initial body-mass index, sex, parental history of hypertension, and length of follow-up, heightened heart rate reactivity to mental arithmetic was associated with increased follow-up systolic blood pressure (DeltaR(2)=0.04, P<0.05). Systolic blood pressure recovery from cold pressor and tourniquet ischemia were also positively related to follow-up systolic blood pressure (DeltaR(2)=0.04 and 0.04, respectively, P<0.05) and remained so even after adjustment for the corresponding cardiovascular reactivity measures. These findings suggest that cardiovascular reactivity and recovery measures are modest predictors of longitudinal changes in blood pressure.

Effects of parental history of hypertension and urbanization on blood pressure in zimbabweans

The increasing prevalence of essential hypertension is a growing public health concern for Zimbabwe and other African countries. Two important risk factors for hypertension are urbanization and parental history of hypertension. The relations among parental history of hypertension, urbanization, and blood pressures (BPs) are poorly understood. The objective of this study is to clarify these relations in a population of urbanized, African, young adults. The relation between parental history of hypertension and urbanization on resting BP's and Bp responses to a mental arithmetic stressor was examined in a group of normotensive, Black medical students with (n = 36) and without (n = 34) a parental history of high BP, and with (n = 49) and without (n = 19) a parental history of urbanization. Results indicate that those with a positive parental history counterparts. Further, those with parents residing in urban areas had higher resting SBPs than those with parents residing in rural areas. However, no reactivity differences were apparent between the urban and rural parent groups. These data suggest that although parental history for hypertension influences both resting and reactivity BP's parental history of urbanization may influence only resting BP.