Does a dipper blood pressure pattern compared to a nondipper pattern affect subclinical organ damage in patients with nocturnal hypertension?
Therapeutic strategies addressing only the nondipper pattern may be insufficient to protect against elevated nocturnal BP, as dippers with nocturnal hypertension also show similar organ damage.
In the presence of nocturnal hypertension, dippers have a similar subclinical cardiac and extra-cardiac organ damage as their nondipper counterparts. These data suggest that therapeutic strategies only addressing the nondipper pattern may be insufficient to protect hypertensive subjects against the dangerous effects of elevated nocturnal BP.American Journal of Hypertension, (2012); doi:10.1038/ajh.2012.49.
Cuspidi et al. (Thu,) studied this question.