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
. 2015 Feb;33(2):266-74.
doi: 10.1097/HJH.0000000000000410.

Tobacco smoking strengthens the association of elevated blood pressure with arterial stiffness: the Bogalusa Heart Study

Miaoying Yun  1 , Shengxu Li, Dianjianyi Sun, Shaoqing Ge, Chin-Chih Lai, Camilo Fernandez, Wei Chen, Sathanur R Srinivasan, Gerald S Berenson
Affiliations

Tobacco smoking strengthens the association of elevated blood pressure with arterial stiffness: the Bogalusa Heart Study

Miaoying Yun et al. J Hypertens. 2015 Feb.

Abstract

Objectives: The study assessed the hypothesis that smoking strengthens the association of adult arterial stiffness with long-term cumulative burden of blood pressure (BP) from childhood to adulthood.

Backgrounds: Tobacco smoking and elevated BPs are important risk factors of vascular stiffness. However, the synergistic effect of these two risk factors is not well established, especially for the long-term burden of elevated BP since childhood.

Methods: The study cohort consisted of 945 adults (661 whites and 284 blacks, aged 24-43 years) who have BP measured 4-15 times since childhood (aged 4-17 years) in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The adult arterial stiffness was measured as aorta-femoral pulse wave velocity (afPWV); the total area under the curve (AUC) and incremental AUC were used as a measure of long-term burden and trends of BP, respectively.

Results: Increased adult afPWV was significantly associated with higher adulthood (P < 0.001), total AUC (P < 0.001) and incremental AUC (P < 0.001) values of SBP and DBP, but not with childhood BP, after adjusting for age, race, sex, BMI and heart rate. Furthermore, smoking was a significant predictor of increased adult afPWV and BP levels. In the interaction analyses, the increasing trend of afPWV with increasing adult SBP (P = 0.009) and its incremental AUC (P = 0.007) were significantly greater among the current smokers than among the nonsmokers. DBP showed a similar pattern regarding the smoking-BP interaction on afPWV.

Conclusion: These results, by showing the synergistic effect of tobacco smoking and long-term BP measures from childhood to adulthood on arterial stiffening process, underscore the importance of undertaking preventive strategies early in life and smoking behavior control.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors do not have conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The area under the curve (AUC) of systolic blood pressure (SBP) with two examples
Figure 2
Figure 2
Relationship of adult afPWV with SBP in childhood and adulthood among current smokers and nonsmokers, adjusted for covariates as shown in Table 2 afPWV=aorta-femoral pulse wave velocity; SBP=systolic blood pressure
Figure 3
Figure 3
Relationship of adult afPWV with total and incremental AUC of SBP among current smokers and nonsmokers, adjusted for covariates as shown in Table 2 afPWV=aorta-femoral pulse wave velocity; AUC= the area under the curve; SBP=systolic blood pressure
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Vlachopoulos C, Aznaouridis K, Stefanadis C. Prediction of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality with arterial stiffness: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2010;55:1318–1327. - PubMed
    1. Ben-Shlomo Y, Spears M, Boustred C, May M, Anderson SG, Benjamin EJ, et al. Aortic pulse wave velocity improves cardiovascular event prediction: an individual participant meta-analysis of prospective observational data from 17,635 subjects. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2014;63:636–646. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cecelja M, Chowienczyk P. Dissociation of aortic pulse wave velocity with risk factors for cardiovascular disease other than hypertension: a systematic review. Hypertension. 2009;54:1328–1336. - PubMed
    1. Virdis A, Giannarelli C, Neves MF, Taddei S, Ghiadoni L. Cigarette smoking and hypertension. Curr Pharm Des. 2010;16:2518–2525. - PubMed
    1. Takami T, Saito Y. Effects of smoking cessation on central blood pressure and arterial stiffness. Vasc Health Risk Manag. 2011;7:633–638. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms