Comparison Between Home and Ambulatory Morning Blood Pressure and Morning Hypertension in Their Reproducibility and Associations With Vascular Injury

Morning blood pressure (BP) is recommended to be assessed by either 24-hour ambulatory or home BP monitoring. By which methods morning BP assessed is more reproducible and more closely associated with vascular injury remains unknown. We, therefore, addressed this issue in 1049 referred untreated outpatients (51.9% women; average age, 51 years) who had performed 24-hour ambulatory and 7-day home BP monitoring and vascular evaluations. Irrespective of the assessment methods, morning BPs were all significantly ( P≤0.027) associated with the arterial measures. The partial correlation coefficients of carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity and urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio with home morning BPs were greater than those with the ambulatory morning pressures among the first 2 hours after awakening (0.21-0.37 versus 0.15-0.24; P<0.05). The associations with home morning systolic BP remained significant ( P≤0.002) after full adjustment for evening BP, whereas those with ambulatory morning BPs became nonsignificant after full adjustment for 24-hour BP except that of the carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity with ambulatory morning (6:00-10:00) systolic BP. Of the 135 subjects who had both home and repeated 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring within 1 month, the coefficients of variation were ≈11% for ambulatory morning BPs and 5% for home self-measurements. In conclusion, morning BP, irrespective of the assessment methods and definitions, was generally reproducible and significantly associated with vascular indices. Nevertheless, home morning BP might be preferred than ambulatory measurements because of better reproducibility and stronger correlation with vascular indices.