Young healthy males exhibited significantly higher resting beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure variability (SD 5.5±1.4 vs 4.4±1.4 mmHg; P=0.004) compared to females.
Do young, healthy males have greater resting beat-to-beat blood pressure variability than young, healthy females?
Young, healthy males exhibit higher beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure variability than females, which may contribute to their higher early-life cardiovascular disease risk.
Absolute Event Rate: 0% vs 0%
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States. Recently, data have shown that augmented resting beat-to-beat blood pressure variability (BPV) is associated with an increased CVD risk. While CVD affects both sexes, before menopause females exhibit lower risk compared to males. However, only a limited number of studies have examined sex differences in beat-to-beat BPV and equivocal results have been reported. Therefore, we tested the hypothesis that young, healthy males have greater resting beat-to-beat BPV than young, healthy females. We studied 45 males (age: 21±2 years; BMI: 25±3 kg/m 2 ) and 29 females (age: 23±3 years, BMI: 24±3 kg/m 2 ). During ten minutes of quiet supine rest, beat-to-beat arterial blood pressure (BP; finger photoplethysmography) was continuously recorded, and brachial automated sphygmomanometry (Welch Allyn) was used to verify beat-to-beat BP measurements. BPV was quantified using the standard deviation (SD), coefficient of variation (CV), and range for beat-to-beat systolic (SBP), diastolic (DBP), and mean arterial (MAP) BP. Resting absolute SBP (males: 118±9 vs females: 113±7 mmHg; P = 0.007) was higher in males compared to females, whereas DBP (males: 66±7 vs females: 67±4 mmHg; P = 0.365) and MAP (males: 83±6 vs females: 82±5 mmHg; P = 0.505) were not different between the groups. Beat-to-beat SBP SD (males: 5.5±1.4 vs females: 4.4±1.4 mmHg; P = 0.004), SBP CV (males: 4.6±1.1 vs females: 3.9±1.4 %; P = 0.003), and SBP range (males: 29.7±7 vs females: 25.7±6.9 mmHg; P = 0.017) were significantly higher in males compared to females. Beat-to-beat DBP SD (males: 3.5±0.8 vs females: 3.4±0.8 mmHg; P = 0.618), DBP CV (males: 5.3±1.1 vs females: 5.1±1.3 %; P = 0.307), and DBP range (males: 21.2±4.6 vs females: 21.6±5.2 mmHg; P = 0.768) were not significantly different between the groups. Likewise, there were no differences in MAP variability measures between the groups (all P > 0.05). These data suggest that young, healthy males exhibit higher beat-to-beat SBP variability compared to their female counterparts, possibly contributing to greater CVD risk. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2026 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.
Kunwar et al. (Fri,) reported a other. Young healthy males exhibited significantly higher resting beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure variability (SD 5.5±1.4 vs 4.4±1.4 mmHg; P=0.004) compared to females.