Cardiovascular reactivity, emotional factors, and home blood pressures in black males with and without a parental history of hypertension

Abstract

Differences in cardiovascular responses to mental stress, psychological factors, and self-determined home blood pressure between black individuals with and without a family history of essential hypertension (EH) may suggest mechanisms responsible for the high incidence of EH in blacks. In this study, 12 black male students with a parental history of EH and 12 without a parental history of EH participated in a laboratory session during which two mental challenge tasks (anagrams and mental arithmetic) were presented. Following the laboratory session all subjects made daily recordings of their morning and evening blood pressure for four weeks (28 days) after the laboratory session. The results showed that sons of hypertensive parents had higher systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) than sons of normotensive parents at rest and during mental challenge; no reliable differences in heart rate were observed. Sons of hypertensive parents had higher self-determined home blood pressure (SBP and DBP) and scored significantly higher on psychological measures of Trait-Anger/Temperament, Anger-Out, and Submissiveness. Apparently there was no significant change in SBP or DBP over the four weeks prior to final examinations in either of the groups. Although the resting blood pressure level, weight, and family history predicted a large proportion of the variance in home SBP and DBP, the amount of explained variance, particularly for DBP, was significantly increased by the inclusion of psychological variables and the level of cardiovascular responses (and not the delta change) to mental challenge in the regression equation. These findings indicate that the degree to which self-determined home blood pressures can be predicted is enhanced significantly by considering both the level of cardiovascular responses to stress and psychological measures of the experience and expression of anger. The implications of these results are discussed in light of current research demonstrating that average home blood pressures are a better predictor of cardiac complications than casual (office) blood pressures.