Vol. 8, Issue 10, Part E (2022)

Background and Objectives: Though 24hours BP monitoring is a useful tool that provide insights in masked and white coat hypertension as well as can be used as a marker of allostatic load (by monitoring circadian variations) and applicable in chronotherapy, is still sparingly used clinically. Hence, the objective of present study is to explore the pattern of circadian variation of blood pressure in normotensive and hypertensive Indians to pave the way for future chronobiological research and predictive medicine.

Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, total 125 volunteers, referred from the medicine OPD/IPD, enrolled. All the volunteers underwent 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. BP recording of 100 participants (37 female and 63 male, mean age = 43.15±14.47 years) was used for final analysis. On the basis of guidelines provided for diagnosis of hypertension by European Society of Heart, individuals were grouped as i) normotensives (n=37) and ii) hypertensives (n=63). For descriptive analysis, different blood pressure parameters from three segments viz. overall, awake period and asleep period were used. Between groups comparison was done using Mann-Whitney and ANNOVA test. P-value < 0.05 had been considered as significant.

Observation and Results: A significance difference in circadian systolic, diastolic and mean arterial BP was observed between groups. Although a higher percentage of non-dippers (65%) was observed in hypertensives but 38% of normotensives have also shown non- dipping status that indicates altered circadian rhythm or allostatic load.

Conclusion: We observed altered circadian blood pressure pattern in both groups though higher percentage of non -dipping status in hypertensive patients. In normotensives it could subserve as an early marker of disease process, in hypertensives, it may be useful for application of Chrono-pharmacology.