[Importance of the blood pressure exercise graph in the diabetic]

The evaluation of the real blood pressure in the diabetic population has a major interest. Arterial blood pressure measure during standardised exercise test could be a supplementary aid in this field of research. This retrospective work is based on 134 diabetic patients compared with age, sex and body mass index matched controls. All of them were tested with a standardised protocol of bicycle ergometer. In the diabetic group, 62 patients present a microalbuminuria over 30 mg/day. The heart rate and arterial pressure do not differ between diabetics and controls before, during, and after the exercise. The registered parameters at the top of the effort are exactly the same for the pulse the systolic and the diastolic blood pressure. Systolic blood pressure gradient during effort is not different between the two groups. The presence of microalbuminuria into the diabetic group do not provoke any modification of cardiac frequency or pressure during the effort. Nevertheless a decrease in systolic blood pressure gradient is noted into the microalbuminuria group despite their older age is in favour of an increase in this parameter. Exercise test has a main place to track down coronary disease and the field of interest is the same that non diabetic patients to find white coat hypertension, to value arterial pressure reactivity during effort of hypertensive athletes or border line hypertensives. The signification and interest of the modification of systolic blood pressure gradient should to be evaluated by other works.