Influence of sex and age on blood pressure variability

The aim of this study has been to identify changes of 24-h blood pressure variability, as related to age and sex in hypertensive subjects. As regards this point several international studies have shown the increase of morbidity and mortality caused by cardiovascular diseases in postmenopausal women produced by a lack of sex hormones, which had protected the women until this period. Each hypertensive subject was submitted to an ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) and two variability indexes were obtained: S.D. and coefficient of variation (CV). The results have shown a strict correlation between blood pressure variability and age, without significant sex-related differences. A decrease of blood pressure variability and mean blood pressure (BP) values have also been found, in the night-time with respect to the day-time data; it was more pronounced in females than in males but this would not seem an age-related difference. Despite the fact that the correlation between blood pressure variability and age is very significant in every considered period in males, it has been found that women have statistical differences only in the day-time and in the nocturnal diastolic blood pressure (DBP) fluctuations. This might be caused by other independent factors, such as a postmenopausal lack of sex hormones.