Simultaneously measured interarm blood pressure difference is not associated with pulse wave velocity in a clinical dataset of at-risk hypertensive patients

Background/Introduction Recent analysis of systolic inter-arm differences in blood pressure from the INTERPRESS-IPD Collaboration suggest an association with increased all-cause mortality, cardiovascular mortality and cardiovascular events, previous studies have demonstrated associations with other risk parameters. Purpose We aimed to reproduce these associations in a cohort of 199 treated, at-risk, hypertensive patients with pulse wave velocity (PWV) as a surrogate marker of cardiovascular (CV) damage. Methods Simultaneously measured Inter-arm blood pressure differences, 24 hour ambulatory BP and PWV were measured in 199 treated patients of a tertiary hospital hypertension outpatient clinic. Associations between systolic inter-arm BP difference and PWV were analyzed with uni- and multivariate regression models. Results Out of 199 participants, 90 showed an Inter-arm blood pressure difference of more than 5 mmHg. The Inter-arm difference was not associated with PWV. Furthermore, neither observed single blood pressure measurements nor 24 hour ambulatory blood pressure was associated with Inter-arm blood pressure differences. Conclusion In our clinical patient cohort we failed to observe an association between inter-arm BP differences and PWV. Mode of assessment, study design or the sample characteristics of this treated, hypertensive cohort may explain the negative results. The limited sample size of the study poses a challenge to the detection of smaller effects in our study. FUNDunding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.