A novel model describing blood pressure profiles

Introduction: Blood pressure follows a circadian rhythm and is influenced by various factors. Blood pressure rises in the morning and decreases at night. It is known that deviations from this pattern are associated with an increased cardiovascular risk. Therefore, it is important to analyze blood pressure profiles and blood pressure variability. Methods: A blood pressure model was developed based on data from cuffless blood pressure measurements of six healthy volunteers over a 14-day period. Exponential formulas were applied for the description of blood pressure curves (systolic and diastolic), which were used for a non-linear regression model in R. Results: All six subjects showed a circadian pattern in systolic and diastolic blood pressure over a 14-day period. Both the measured values and the predicted values show that each subject's blood pressure was lower at night than during the day. Differences emerged in the level of blood pressure, the fluctuation, and the sleep times, which revealed individual characteristics in the daily blood pressure curves. Discussion: This novel blood pressure model can be used to visualize blood pressure profiles for several days and enables the assessment of the intra- and inter-individual variability of blood pressure.