Evaluating Air Force Personnel with Higher Body Mass Indexes by Monitoring Ambulatory Blood Pressure

It is possible that a single clinical blood pressure (BP) reading, as currently practiced in the Indian Air Force, may not be able to establish hypertensive status. This study examined whether at higher body mass indexes (BMI), 24-h ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) would be a better tool for detecting latent hypertension vis-à-vis clinical BP recording.

In this study, 230 healthy, male, clinically normotensive (BP <140/90 mm of Hg) subjects between 20-40 yr of age were included: 50 with normal BMI (<25 kg · m-2), 120 overweight (BMI 25-29.99 kg · m-2), and 60 obese (BMI ≥ 30 kg · m-2). Each subject underwent BMI measurement, clinical BP recording, and 24-h ABPM. Correlation analysis, analysis of variance, and Chi-squared tests were used for statistical analysis of the data.

A statistically significant positive correlation was observed between mean arterial pressure and BMI. The 24-hour ABPM revealed a significant effect of BMI on mean arterial pressure, which was not observed in clinical BP measurement. The hypertensive response shown by ABPM was statistically significant between obese and normal BMI as well as obese and overweight groups. This was not statistically significant between normal BMI and overweight groups. ABPM also revealed a consistent statistically significant blunting of nocturnal dip response with increasing BMI.

Among the obese, 24-h ABPM was found to be useful for hypertension screening and is recommended as an assessment tool for hypertension screening in medical evaluation of obese personnel. Tripathy NK, Joshi VV, Raghunandan V. Evaluating air force personnel with higher body mass indexes by monitoring ambulatory blood pressure. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2026; 97(1):42-46.