Seasonal blood pressure changes: an independent relationship with temperature and daylight hours

Seasonal blood pressure (BP) changes have been found to be related to either outdoor or indoor temperature. No information regarding the independent effects of temperature measured proximally to the patient, the personal-level environmental temperature (PET), is available. Inclusion of daylight hours in multivariate analysis might allow exploring the independent interaction of BP with seasonality. To investigate whether ambulatory BP monitoring is affected by PET or by seasonality, 1897 patients referred to our hypertension units underwent ambulatory BP monitoring with a battery-powered temperature data logger fitted to the carrying pouch of the monitor. Predictors of 24-hour daytime and nighttime BP and of morning BP surge were investigated with a multivariate stepwise regression model, including age, sex, body mass index, antihypertensive treatment, office BP, ambulatory heart rate, PET, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, and daylight hours as independent variables. At adjusted regression analysis, daytime systolic BP was negatively related to PET (-0.14; 95% confidence interval, -0.25 to -0.02); nighttime BP was positively related to daylight hours (0.63; 0.37-0.90); and morning BP surge was negatively related to daylight hours (-0.54; -0.87 to -0.21). These results provide new evidence that PET and seasonality (daylight hours) are 2 independent predictors of ambulatory BP monitoring.