Effect of patient gender on short-term blood pressure variability in hemodialysis patients.

Abstract

Increased bloodpressurevariability(BPV) is strongly associated with cardiovascular events in end-stagekidneydisease patients. Male hemodialysis patients present higher cardiovascular risk compared with females. The aim of this study is to investigate sexdifferences in short-term BPV in hemodialysis patients. 129 male and 91 female hemodialysis patients that underwent 48-h ABPM were included in this analysis. Standarddeviation(SD), weightedSD(wSD), coefficientofvariation(CV), and averagerealvariability(ARV) of SBPandDBP were calculated with validated formulas. Age, dialysis vintage and history of major comorbidities did not differ between men and women. 48-h SBP/DBP(137.2 ± 17.4/81.9 ± 12.1 mmHg vs 132.2 ± 19.2/75.9 ± 11.7 mmHg, p = 0.045/<0.001) was significantly higher in men than women. During the 48-h period, all systolic BPV indices were similar between men and women(48-h SBP-ARV: 12.0 ± 2.9 vs 12.1 ± 3.2 mmHg, p = 0.683); 48-h DBP-SD, DBP-wSD and DBP-ARV(9.1 ± 1.6 vs 8.4 ± 1.8 mmHg, p = 0.005) were higher in men. In conclusion, short-term diastolic BPV indices are higher in male than female hemodialysis patients. Increased BPV may impact on the higher incidence of cardiovascular events observed in male hemodialysis patients.