Left ventricular mass index as 'outcome' related to circadian blood pressure characteristics

Hourly blood pressure data collected with an ambulatory monitor for 24 hours on 424 patients were chrono-meta-analyzed to check on an earlier finding that patients with an excessive circadian blood pressure amplitude (above the upper 95% prediction limit of healthy peers matched by gender and age), a condition called circadian hyper-amplitude-tension (CHAT), are at a greatly increased vascular disease risk. The left ventricular mass index (LVMI), determined echographically on each subject, served as a surrogate outcome measure. Patients with CHAT were found to have an elevated LVMI, thus corroborating earlier results from a 6-year prospective study based on the actual incidence of morbid events.