Depressed people with high blood pressure are less likely to have their blood pressure under control than those who are not depressed, researchers reported today at the XVth Scientific Meeting of the Inter-American Society of Hypertension, which is co-sponsored by the American Heart Association’s Council for High Blood Pressure Research.
In older people with high blood pressure, a sharp increase in blood pressure in the morning increases the risk of stroke and is linked to brain lesions known as “silent” strokes, according to a study in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. “This study is the first to show that an excessive morning blood pressure surge is a predictor of stroke in elderly people with high blood pressure,” says lead author Kazuomi Kario, M.D., from the department of cardiology at Jichi Medical School in Tochigi, Japan.