Pulse Pressure and Resistance Artery Structure in the Elderly

Abstract
There has been recent interest in the possibility that resistance vessel structural adaptation in hypertension may be more closely related to pulse pressure than to other blood pressure parameters. We investigated the relation between blood pressure and resistance vessel structure in a group of subjects from an age group (older than 60 years) in which a widening of pulse pressure is a typical finding and characterized blood pressure parameters using 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. We studied resistance vessels retrieved from biopsies of skin and subcutaneous fat taken from the gluteal region of 32 subjects under local anesthesia (age, 70±1 years [mean±SEM]), 21 of whom were hypertensive and 11 normotensive. Media-lumen ratio was higher in the hypertensive than the normotensive subjects (18.6±1.6% versus 12.8±1.2%, P<.01) and correlated with age (r=.44, P<.05), clinic systolic pressure (r=.35, P<.05), 24-hour systolic pressure (r=.40, P<.05), and 24-hour pulse pressure (r=.56, P<.001...