Normal Exercise Blood Pressure Response in African-American Women with Parental History of Hypertension

Abstract

Genetic and environmental hypotheses may explain why normotensive persons at high risk of developing hypertension often exhibit greater cardiovascular reactivity to stressors than those at low risk. Pearson's correlation was used to evaluate reproducibility and independent t test to compare the cardiovascular responses to 30 W of exercise of normotensive young adult African-American women with positive and negative parental histories (PH) of hypertension (PH, n = 23; PH, n = 20). Correlations were significant for duplicate measurements. The effects of PH on blood pressure measured at rest and during exercise were not statistically significant (P > 0.1). A nearly significant trend for greater resting (.-)VO(2) (P = 0.08) was detected in the PH than in the PH group (3.67 +/- 0.18 versus 3.26 +/- 0.14 mL/kg/min). A hyper-reactive blood pressure response to exercise, characteristic of the evolution of hypertension, may not be present among the normotensive female offspring of hypertensive African Americans. The significance of an 11% intergroup difference in the mean resting (.-)VO(2) observed in this study is unclear.