Youth Blood Pressure and Target Organ Injury Markers: The SHIP AHOY Study

Hypertension in adolescence is associated with subclinical target organ injury. We aimed to determine whether different blood pressure thresholds were associated with an increasing number of target organ injury markers in healthy adolescents.

A total of 244 participants (mean age 15.5±1.8 years, 60.1% male adolescents) were studied. Participants were divided based on systolic clinic and systolic awake ambulatory blood pressure into low- (<75th percentile), mid- (75th-90th percentile), and high-risk (>90th percentile) groups. The ambulatory blood pressure phenotype was classified as normotensive, white-coat, masked, or sustained hypertension. Target organ injury assessments included left ventricular mass, systolic and diastolic function, and vascular stiffness. A multivariable general linear model was constructed to evaluate the association of different participant characteristics with higher numbers of target organ injury markers.

A total of 31.2% of participants had 1, 11.9% 2, 3.7% 3, and 0.8% 4 target organ injury markers. The number of target organ injury markers increased according to the risk groups: the percentage of participants with >1 marker in the low-, mid-, and high-risk groups was 6.7%, 19.1%, and 21.8% (P=0.02) and 9.6%, 15.8%, and 32.2% (P<0.001), based on clinic and ambulatory blood pressure, respectively. Participants with white-coat (23%), masked (35%), and sustained hypertension (32%) were more likely to have >1 target organ injury marker than normotensives (8%, P<0.001). The results were unchanged in multivariate analysis.

High clinic and ambulatory blood pressure values, as well as ambulatory blood pressure phenotypes (white-coat, masked, and sustained hypertension), were independently associated with an increasing number of subclinical cardiovascular injury markers in adolescents.