Diminished nocturnal decline in blood pressure in elderly hypertensive patients with left ventricular hypertrophy

To assess the circadian blood pressure (BP) changes in elderly hypertensive patients with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), the ambulatory BP was measured noninvasively every 30 minutes for 24 hours in those patients with LVH (n = 15) and without LVH (n = 23), and in normotensive elderly subjects (n = 11). Although the daytime systolic BP (SBP) was comparable in the two hypertensive groups, the nighttime SBP in patients with LVH tended to be higher than in patients without LVH (149.0 +/- 15.1 versus 138.4 +/- 20.1 mm Hg, p less than 0.10). The LV mass index correlated significantly with the nighttime SBP (r = 0.43, p less than 0.01), but not with the daytime SBP (r = 0.24, ns), with clinic SBP (r = 0.14, p = ns) or the SBP after handgrip exercise (r = 0.31, p = ns). The difference in the systolic BP between daytime and nighttime (D-N SBP) in patients with LVH (2.8 +/- 9.4 mm Hg) was significantly less than that in patients without LVH (12.8 +/- 16.0 mm Hg) (p less than 0.02). In addition, the D-N SBP correlated inversely with the left ventricular mass index (r = -0.33, p less than 0.05). It was concluded that hypertension in the elderly with LVH was associated with a diminished nocturnal decline in blood pressure.