High blood pressure worsens age-related increases in arterial stiffness evaluated by pulse wave velocity in subjects with lifestyle-related diseases

Objective:   Arterial stiffness is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, and is altered by age and blood pressure. Lifestyle-related diseases are also major risk factors for cardiovascular events and influence arterial stiffness. The goal of this study was to clarify the clinical influence of aging on pulse wave velocity in patients with hypertension, diabetes and/or dyslipidemia.
Methods:   Eight hundred and forty-seven outpatients (480 males, 367 females, mean age 61.5 years) at the Division of Geriatric Medicine and Hypertension in Osaka University Hospital who had lifestyle-related diseases such as hypertension ( n  = 720), diabetes ( n  = 228) and dyslipidemia ( n  = 613) were enrolled. We evaluated arterial stiffness as measured by carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity.
Results:   After age and systolic blood pressure adjustment, pulse wave velocity was higher in hypertensive patients ( P  = 0.0048), but not in patients with diabetes or dyslipidemia. By single linear regression analysis, pulse wave velocity and age were positively correlated in patients with ( r  = 0.359, P  < 0.0001) and without ( r  = 0.377, P  < 0.0001) hypertension, and the regression coefficients of these two groups were similar. Moreover, these variables were positively correlated with pulse wave velocity in hypertensive patients receiving medication ( r  = 0.324, P  < 0.0001) and without medication ( r  = 0.425, P  < 0.0001), and the regression coefficient with medication (0.033) was lower than that without medication (0.045).
Conclusion   These data suggest that the presence of hypertension worsened the age-related increase in arterial stiffness in patients with lifestyle-related diseases.