Background:
Elevated blood pressure variability (BPV) in the days after acute stroke onset is associated with worse outcome. However, the mechanism of increased BPV remains unknown, but may be due to dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which can be measured by pupil response to a light stimulus.
Methods:
This is a retrospective study of 109 patients in a neurocritical care unit: 45 with acute ischemic stroke (AIS), 44 with intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), and 20 with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). The primary outcome is BPV, measured as standard deviation of SBP (SD), using all blood pressures from admission to 72 hours later. The primary predictors are pupillary light reflexes (PLR) from the same period, measured with a bedside pupilometer, the NPi-200. We used linear regression to evaluate the association between PLRs and BPV, and adjusted for patient age and gender.
Results:
The mean (SD) age was 60.7 (16.4) and 58.7% were male. The mean (SD) number of blood pressure and PLR measurements were 30.0 (9.0) and 10.4 (7.3). We found that parasympathetically mediated PLR measures were associated with BPV in AIS patients (Table 1), but no consistent pattern emerged in ICH or SAH patients (all p>0.05). The relationships between BPV and PLR for AIS patients were linear in nature (Figure 1), and were consistent with parasympathetic hypofunction in patients with the greatest BPV.
Conclusions:
Elevated BPV is associated with parasympathetic hypofunction, as measured by pupillary response to light, after acute ischemic, but not hemorrhagic, stroke. Further research is needed to better understand this relationship as it may represent a therapeutic target for BPV reduction.
Associations between Personal Exposure to Metals in Fine Particulate Matter and Autonomic Nervous System Dysfunction among Healthy Adults
