Circadian rhythm of blood pressure and its related factors in patients with hypertension

Introduction. Hypertension is a common, almost asymptomatic, detectable and treatable disease. Abnormal circadian rhythm of blood pressure is associated with increased risk of disorders such as sleep problems, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease and cancer. On the other hand, 24-hour blood pressure monitoring, a method for detecting the abnormal pattern of blood pressure decrease over night, gets less clinicians’ attention. This study aims to determine the circadian rhythm of blood pressure and its related factors in hypertensive patients. Material and methods. This analytical cross-sectional study was done in 2015. The study population was patients referred to the offices and clinics in the city of Qom and 183 of them were selected based on convenience sampling. Data were collected by use of demographic checklist and the results of 24-hour monitoring of blood pressure. Results. The mean age of patients was 52.08 ± 14.16 years, and 57.9% were female. The mean duration of hyper- tension history was 4.32 ± 4.96 years. 77% of the patients had non-dipper blood pressure pattern. In terms of age (p = 0.31) and duration of hypertension (p = 0.93), gender (p = 0.55) and type of hypertension treatment (p = 0.96), there was no significant difference between the two groups of dippers and non-dippers. Conclusions. In this study, the frequency of non-dipper pattern in patients with hypertension was higher than in similar studies. Since the importance of 24-hour blood pressure monitoring for proper evaluation and management, it is recommended that hypertensive patients undergo 24-hour blood pressure monitoring.