Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2007 Dec;115(12):1696-700.
doi: 10.1289/ehp.10350.

Cumulative community-level lead exposure and pulse pressure: the normative aging study

Todd Perlstein  1 , Jennifer Weuve, Joel Schwartz, David Sparrow, Robert Wright, Augusto Litonjua, Huiling Nie, Howard Hu
Affiliations

Cumulative community-level lead exposure and pulse pressure: the normative aging study

Todd Perlstein et al. Environ Health Perspect. 2007 Dec.

Abstract

Background: Pulse pressure increases with age in industrialized societies as a manifestation of arterial stiffening. Lead accumulates in the vasculature and is associated with vascular oxidative stress, which can promote functional and structural vascular disease.

Objectives: We tested the hypothesis that cumulative community-level lead exposure, measured with K-X-ray fluorescence, is associated with pulse pressure in a cohort of adult men.

Methods and results: In a cross-sectional analysis of 593 men not treated with antihypertensive medication, tibia lead was positively associated with pulse pressure (p < 0.001). Adjusting for age, race, diabetes, family history of hypertension, education, waist circumference, alcohol intake, smoking history, height, heart rate, fasting glucose, and total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio, increasing quintiles of tibia lead remained associated with increased pulse pressure (ptrend = 0.02). Men with tibia lead above the median (19.0 microg/g) had, on average, a 4.2-mmHg (95% confidence interval, 1.9-6.5) higher pulse pressure than men with tibia lead level below the median. In contrast, blood lead level was not associated with pulse pressure.

Conclusions: These data indicate that lead exposure may contribute to the observed increase in pulse pressure that occurs with aging in industrialized societies. Lead accumulation may contribute to arterial aging, perhaps providing mechanistic insight into the observed association of low-level lead exposure with cardiovascular mortality.

Keywords: aging; epidemiology; human; lead exposure; pulse pressure.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Arterial pressure parameters (mean ± SD) by age group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abramson JL, Weintraub WS, Vaccarino V. Association between pulse pressure and C-reactive protein among apparently healthy US adults. Hypertension. 2002;39:197–202. - PubMed
    1. Barry PS, Mossman DB. Lead concentrations in human tissues. Br J Ind Med. 1970;27:339–351. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burger DE, Milder FL, Morsillo PR, Adams BB, Hu H. Automated bone lead analysis by K-x-ray fluorescence for the clinical environment. Basic Life Sci. 1990;55:287–292. - PubMed
    1. Cheng Y, Schwartz J, Sparrow D, Aro A, Weiss ST, Hu H. Bone lead and blood lead levels in relation to baseline blood pressure and the prospective development of hypertension: the Normative Aging Study. Am J Epidemiol. 2001;153:164–171. - PubMed
    1. Domanski M, Norman J, Wolz M, Mitchell G, Pfeffer M. Cardiovascular risk assessment using pulse pressure in the first National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES I) Hypertension. 2001;38:793–797. - PubMed

Publication types