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Published on: July 10, 2017
Stress-induced cardiovascular reactivity among African American smokers
Krista B Highland1, Dennis E McChargue
1Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308, USA.
Objectives:
To test for differences in stress-induced cardiovascular functioning among hypertensive and normotensive African American (AA) smokers.
Methods:
Participants (n = 35) were exposed to both stress and neutral mood inductions.
Results:
Repeated measures analyses of covariance produced a significant group x mood condition interaction for systolic blood pressure (P = .048), but not for diastolic blood pressure (P > .05). The most notable finding was that AA hypertensive smokers showed selectively greater elevations in their systolic responses compared with normotensive controls following the laboratory-induced stressor.
Conclusions:
Implications to an elevated risk of future cardiovascular disease among AA hypertensive smokers are discussed.
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