Preeclampsia and cardiovascular disease risk assessment - Do arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis uncover increased risk ten years after delivery?

OBJECTIVES: Epidemiological studies associate preeclampsia with increased risk of premature cardiovascular disease (CVD) later in life. This study aims to make a comprehensive CVD risk assessment comparing women with previous preeclamptic pregnancies to women with previous normotensive pregnancies 10years after index pregnancy. STUDY DESIGN: A nested, matched, observational cohort study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Markers of arterial stiffness, aortic pulse wave velocity (aPWV) and augmentation index (AIx-75), and markers of atherosclerosis, carotid intima-media thickness (cIMT) and carotid plaque presence. Traditional CVD risk factors and 10-year and 30-year Framingham CVD risk scores were also assessed. RESULTS: Women were included from April 2014 to October 2014 at a tertiary referral hospital in Denmark. Twenty-one exposed women with a history of preeclampsia and 21 unexposed with a history of normotensive pregnancies were included. Ten years after delivery, significantly more exposed women suffered from hypertension and received antihypertensive treatment and significantly more fulfilled the hypertension-definition at screening. Previously preeclamptic women also tended to have more unfavorable CVD risk estimates. The Framingham risk scores seemed to extend the unfavorable CVD risk. The exposed women tended to have a higher aPWV compared to unexposed women, (P=0.057). No differences were shown in the other examined arteriosclerotic or atherosclerotic variables. CONCLUSIONS: Ten years after delivery, we found increased risk of hypertension and trend toward unfavorable CVD risk profile in 40-year-old previously preeclamptic women. However, arterial stiffness and atherosclerosis did not uncover any additional CVD risk information at this time point.

Targeting nocturnal hypertension in type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Several studies in different populations have suggested that nighttime blood pressure (BP) is a stronger predictor of cardiovascular events than daytime BP. Consequently, treatment strategies to target nighttime BP have come into focus. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of change of administration time of antihypertensive drugs. We included 41 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and nocturnal hypertension (nighttime systolic BP >120 mm Hg) in an open-label, crossover study. Patients were randomized to 8 weeks of either morning or bedtime administration of all of the individual's once-daily antihypertensive drugs, followed by 8 weeks of switched dosing regimen. Bedtime administration of antihypertensive drugs resulted in a significant reduction in nighttime (7.5 mm Hg; P<0.001) and 24-hour (3.1 mm Hg; P=0.014) systolic BP, with a nonsignificant reduction in daytime (1.3 mm Hg; P=0.336) systolic BP. We did not find morning BP surge to be different between dosing regimens. Levels of C-reactive protein were significantly lower with bedtime administration, which may indicate an effect on low-grade inflammation. We found no difference in urinary albumin excretion, regardless of albuminuria status. Urinary sodium/creatinine was significantly increased and urinary osmolality significantly reduced with bedtime administration, which can be interpreted as increased nocturnal natriuresis. In patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and nocturnal hypertension, administration of once-daily antihypertensive drugs at bedtime may be favorable. The increased nocturnal natriuresis may reflect increased effect of bedtime-administered thiazides and renin-angiotensin system inhibitors, suggesting a potential mechanism of the observed effects on BP with chronotherapeutic intervention.

Invasive validation of arteriograph estimates of central blood pressure in patients with type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Central blood pressure (BP) has attracted increasing interest because of a potential superiority over brachial BP in predicting cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Several devices estimating central BP noninvasively are now available. The aim of our study was to determine the validity of the Arteriograph, a brachial cuff-based, oscillometric device, in patients with type 2 diabetes. METHODS: We measured central BP invasively and compared it with the Arteriograph-estimated values in 22 type 2 diabetic patients referred to elective coronary angiography. RESULTS: The difference (invasively measured BP minus Arteriograph-estimated BP) in central systolic BP (SBP) was 4.4±8.7 mm Hg (P = 0.03). The limits of agreement were ±17.1 mm Hg. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with invasively measured central SBP, we found a systematic underestimation by the Arteriograph. However, the limits of agreement were similar to the previous Arteriograph validation study and to the invasive validation studies of other brachial cuff-based, oscillometric devices. A limitation in our study was the large number of patients (n = 14 of 36) in which the Arteriograph was unable to analyze the pressure curves. In a research setting, the Arteriograph seems applicable in patients with type 2 diabetes. CLINICAL TRAIL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov ID NCT01538290.