Daytime and nighttime blood pressure as predictors of death and cause-specific cardiovascular events in hypertension.

Our aim was to assess the prognostic significance of nighttime and daytime ambulatory blood pressure and their ratio for mortality and cause-specific cardiovascular events in hypertensive patients without major cardiovascular disease at baseline. We performed a meta-analysis on individual data of 3468 patients from 4 prospective studies performed in Europe. Age of the subjects averaged 61+/-13 years, 45% were men, 13.7% smoked, 8.4% had diabetes, and 61% were under antihypertensive treatment at the time of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring. Office, daytime, and nighttime blood pressure averaged 159+/-20/91+/-12, 143+/-17/87+/-12, and 130+/-18/75+/-12 mm Hg. Total follow-up amounted to 23 164 patient-years. We used multivariable Cox regression analysis to assess the hazard ratios associated with 1 standard deviation higher blood pressure. Daytime and nighttime systolic blood pressure predicted all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, coronary heart disease, and stroke, independently from office blood pressure and confounding variables. When these blood pressures were entered simultaneously into the models, nighttime blood pressure predicted all outcomes, whereas daytime blood pressure did not add prognostic precision to nighttime pressure. Appropriate interaction terms indicated that the results were similar in men and women, in younger and older patients, and in treated and untreated patients The systolic night-day blood pressure ratio predicted all outcomes, which only persisted for all-cause mortality after adjustment for 24-hour blood pressure. In conclusion, nighttime blood pressure is in general a better predictor of outcome than daytime pressure in hypertensive patients, and the night-day blood pressure ratio predicts mortality, even after adjustment for 24-hour blood pressure.