Cigarette smoking lowers blood pressure in adolescents: the Irbid-TRY

OBJECTIVE: Tobacco consumption adversely affects cardiovascular (CV) disease (CVD) and risk profile, including hypertension. The long-term effect of cigarette smoking on blood pressure (BP) in adolescents is still, however, equivocal. Thus, the current study examined the CV indices in male adolescent cigarette smokers versus nonsmokers. METHOD: Resting heart rate, systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), pulse pressure (PP) and rate pressure products (RPP) were examined using automatic oscillatory method, while smoking status was determined with Youth Risk Behavior Survey. RESULTS: After controlling for cofactors, the ANCOVA showed that CV measures in the male adolescent smokers were lower (p < 0.05) than nonsmokers. Additionally, regression showed that smoking status explained 20.6% of SBP, 5.0% of DBP, 13.4% of MAP, 7.5% of PP and 13.4% of RPP. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that cigarette smoking lowers CV measures in adolescents. However, more studies are needed to describe the mechanism(s) for lowering CV measures and explain the relationship of adolescent smoking with adulthood CVDs.