Symptoms and signs in relation to blood pressure and antihypertensive treatment. A cross-sectional and longitudinal population study of middle-aged Swedish women.

Altogether 1462 middle-aged women aged 38-60 participated in a population study which was carried out in Göteborg, Sweden in 1968-69. Of these women, 1302 were re-investigated six years later in a follow-up study. Studied cross-sectionally, headache and nycturia were found to be more common in both untreated and treated hypertensives than in a non-hypertensive reference group. The prevalences of headache seemed to be U-shaped when related to the BP levels, with the highest prevalences in the lowest and highest quintiles of BP levels. In the longitudinal study, headache did not occur more often in those women who had started antihypertensive treatment than in the others. Dizziness as a new symptom occurred more often in women who had started to take antihypertensive drugs than in those who had not, and was more common in those who had started taking diuretics than in those starting on beta-blockers. The prevalences of eyeground phenomena and ECG changes seemed to increase linearly with increasing BP levels. It is concluded that some symptoms and signs are related to BP levels, and some of the symptoms in hypertensive women may also be related to antihypertensive treatment as such and to the type of antihypertensive treatment given.