Does high arterial stiffness increase cardiovascular disease risk in hypertensive and nonhypertensive individuals?
High arterial stiffness may explain residual CVD risk in well-controlled hypertension and is associated with increased CVD risk regardless of hypertension status.
A substantial proportion of treated hypertensives have high arterial stiffness, a finding that may explain some of the notable residual CVD risk associated with even well-controlled hypertension. High PWV is associated with a trend towards increasing CVD risk in both nonhypertensives and hypertensives, a finding that may support the use of arterial stiffness measurements in both populations.
Niiranen et al. (2016) studied this question.