New link between blood pressure and heart failure

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Having a relatively high blood pressure at night increases the risk of heart failure.
Congestive heart failure (CHF) is one of the most common and disabling of diseases, with patients having a one in three chance of dying within a year of diagnosis. Coronary heart disease and high blood pressure are the most common risk factors for CHF. It may be that 24-hour blood pressure monitoring gives a more accurate prediction of this risk compared with doctor's office measurement. A team at Uppsala University now report on this question.

They looked at the blood pressure of 951 elderly men, free of CHF at the start of the study, carrying out 24 hour monitoring. Seventy men developed CHF during follow up and analysis revealed that an increase in night-time blood pressure was linked to an increased risk of CHF. Clearly the 24 hour blood pressure monitoring trace is informative when looking at an individual's risk of CHF - but further work is needed to establish the clinical significance of this finding.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 28th June 2006 Volume 295 pages 2859-2866