Association between metabolic syndrome and parameters of 24-hour blood pressure ambulatory monitoring

objective: to investigate associations between metabolic syndrome (ms) and 24-hour blood pressure parameters as a measure of cardiovascular risk (cvr). subjects and methods: 136 hypertensive subjects, of both sexes, aged between 29 and 83 years were studied. cvr was defined as having at least three of the following conditions: 1) systolic/diastolic blood pressure (bp) ≥ 140/90 mmhg, absence/atennuation of nighttime fall in bp during sleep, pulse pressure (pp) ≥ 53 mmhg; 2) 24-h pp > 53 mmhg, 3) nighttime pp > 53 mmhg, 4) daytime pp > 53 mmhg and 5) nighttime fall in bp during sleep. results: the 24-h pp, daytime pp and nighttime pp were elevated in 54% of the population. hypertriglyceridemia (52%), low hdl (72.8%), abdominal obesity (60.3%), ms (58.1%), dyslipidemia (88.8%), overweight (74.3%) and obesity (33.8%) were also elevated. age-adjusted ms was associated with higher cvr (or = 4.5 and 3.6), 24-h pp (or = 2.3 and 4.7), and daytime pp (or = 2.2 and 4.6). conclusions: ms was highly prevalent and correlated with altered 24-hour blood pressure parameters.