Blood pressure morning surge and hostility.

This study examined the effects of hostility on blood pressure (BP) during the early morning hours before awakening and several hours afterward. Our objective was to determine whether the pattern of BP change and the slope of the morning BP surge were related to hostility. The subjects were 32 patients with a history of Stage 1 hypertension. The morning surge in BP was derived from ambulatory BP monitoring of sleeping and waking hours, which were averaged per subject and centered around the wake-up hour. The periods used were 3 h before and 3 h after awakening. Only systolic blood pressure (SBP) is being reported on in this paper as this is the primary measure found relevant to the morning surge phenomenon. Hostility was assessed by the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory (total score). The results revealed significant differences between low and high hostility subjects for overall levels of sleep SBP: 120 +/- 11.4 mm Hg for low hostility and 131.3 +/- 14.9 mm Hg for high hostility subjects (P = .02). Low hostility subjects showed a steep rise in SBP from sleeping to waking while high hostility subjects had almost reached their post-sleep level of SBP in the hours immediately before waking up (P = .03). These data indicate that individual differences in hostility are related to different patterns of BP during sleep and the early morning hours, a period of the day that has been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular incidents. The data also suggest the need for further study of the significance of hostility and other personality traits and the relationship of these traits to the mechanisms of the morning surge and the risk of cardiovascular events.

Outcome of hypertension management in Asian Americans.

BACKGROUND: Ethnic and/or racial differences in drug response to antihypertensive agents have been recognized, yet the prescribing practices and the information on efficacy of various agents rely mainly on the response of whites to drugs. OBJECTIVES: To assess the management of hypertension in Asian Americans and to compare it with an age- and sex-matched group of white patients with hypertension. METHODS: The patients' medical records were used as the primary source of information for the data collection. The observational period was a 12-month window and included 200 patients of Asian origin with hypertension and 196 white patients with hypertension whose medical records were randomly selected. RESULTS: The study describes the pattern of use of antihypertensive agents and the differences in response to antihypertensive agents between Asian Americans and whites. The preferred antihypertensive agents in both Asian and white patients included monotherapy with either calcium channel blockers or angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors. However, medication changes, dose reduction, and the experience of side effects were all significantly more frequently recorded in Asian patients than in white patients (P < .001, P < .008, and P < .002, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: These findings are supportive of some previous reports on ethnic differences in drug response to antihypertensive agents. The findings also point to the need for further prospective studies on the outcome of hypertension management in Asian American patients.

Reduction in drug requirements for hypertension by means of a cognitive-behavioral intervention.

The purpose of the present study was to test the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral intervention as an adjunctive treatment of hypertension. To qualify for the study, subjects had to have an unmedicated clinic diastolic blood pressure > or = 95 mm Hg. After qualification, minimal drug requirements were established using a diuretic and a beta-blocker to control blood pressure at < or = 90 mm Hg. Subjects were then randomized into a 6-week cognitive-behavioral intervention or a measurements-only control group. After the treatment phase, medication levels were reduced in all subjects by means of a systematic stepdown procedure. Subjects were followed for 1 year after the stepdown was completed. Addition of the cognitive-behavioral intervention was twice as effective as the control procedure in reducing drug requirements. At 12-months follow-up, 73% of the treatment group were at lower levels of medication than at the time of randomization, compared to 35% in the control group. Moreover, 55% of the treatment group remained completely free of medication, compared to 30% of the control group, at the 12-month follow-up. The reductions in medication were associated with maintained controlled levels of clinic, ambulatory, and home blood pressure. The addition of a standardized and inexpensive group-administered cognitive-behavioral intervention to the drug treatment of hypertension is beneficial as an adjunctive treatment in reducing drug requirements for patients with hypertension, thereby reducing the costs and potential side effects of antihypertensive medications.

Hostility and the response to diuretic in mild-to-moderate hypertension.

Forty-two patients with mild-to-moderate hypertension between the ages of 35 and 65 (23 men, 19 women) were studied to determine whether psychological characteristics can help differentiate between responders and nonresponders to diuretic (hydrochlorothiazide 25 mg and triamterene 50 mg). To qualify for inclusion in the study, the subjects were required to have a mean unmedicated clinic diastolic blood pressure (DBP) between 95 and 110 mm Hg. Positive response to diuretic was defined as a reduction in clinic DBP < or = 90 mm Hg. Of the 42 subjects, 22 were responders to diuretic, achieving a BP level of 129/86 mm Hg, a reduction of 16/11 mm Hg from their unmedicated level. Nonresponders achieved a reduction of 8/4 mm Hg. Compared with nonresponders, responders were characterized by slightly lower initial BP levels and significantly lower scores on the Buss-Durkee Hostility Inventory and several subscales of this test. The pattern of results indicated higher levels of suppressed hostility in the nonresponders. Ambulatory BP data paralleled the clinic BP changes.

Self-collection by diabetic patients of capillary blood for free insulin monitoring; reduction by diamide of haemolysis-induced insulin loss.

The need to precipitate bound insulin immediately after withdrawal of blood and the tendency to haemolysis, which reduces immunoassayable insulin, have prevented development of methods of self-collection of capillary blood for later free insulin measurement. We therefore investigated the use of the thiol-oxidizing agent, diamide, to prevent insulin loss with haemolysis and developed a self-collection procedure with capillary tubes pre-filled with diamide and polyethyleneglycol (PEG, for separation of free and bound insulin). Diamide (final concentration 5 mmol l-1) reduced serum insulin loss from 48 +/- 4 (+/- SE) to 11 +/- 4% (p less than 0.001) in maximally-haemolysed samples. The effect of diamide was concentration-dependent up to 5 mmol l-1. Diamide had no effect on the standard curve for radioimmunoassay of insulin. Levels of serum free insulin in self-collected capillary blood were significantly correlated with venous serum free insulin in 22 non-diabetic subjects (r = 0.92, p less than 0.001), 52 Type 1 diabetic patients (r = 0.86, p less than 0.001), and 18 Type 2 diabetic patients (r = 0.97, p less than 0.001). Mean capillary free insulin concentration was higher than in venous serum (22% in normal subjects, 64% in Type 1, and 23% in Type 2 diabetic patients). Storage at room temperature of capillary blood containing PEG/diamide for 72 h did not alter immunoassayable insulin concentrations.

Patterns of hyperinsulinaemia in type 1 diabetic patients with and without nephropathy.

The prevalence and patterns of insulinaemia in five groups of patients with Type 1 diabetes have been reinvestigated using a free insulin assay which minimizes in vitro redistribution of the free and antibody-bound insulin components. In 18 diabetic patients managed by conventional insulin injection treatment and 19 patients treated by continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII), the mean 24-h serum free insulin level exceeded a non-diabetic reference range in 78% (injections) and 68% (CSII). Twenty-four-hour profiles showed that hyperinsulinaemia occurred in the basal state before meals and at night, but not immediately post-prandially. The serum free insulin concentration at 0800 h, 1200 h, and 1600 h was significantly (p less than 0.001) correlated with mean 24-h free insulin in injection-treated and CSII patients, and samples at one of these time-points may thus provide a simple, single measure of integrated insulinaemia for population studies. There was no significant difference in 24-h mean free insulin levels in 7 patients randomly crossed-over between injection treatment and CSII, but the profiles had a more physiological pattern during CSII, with a mean post-prandial serum free insulin level which was significantly higher on CSII than injections (mean +/- SE = 37.2 +/- 3.1 vs 26.9 +/- 2.5 mU l-1, p = 0.01).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Salivary insulin in normal and type I diabetic subjects.

We studied the relationship of salivary insulin to serum insulin concentrations in normal subjects and type I (insulin-dependent) diabetic patients to test the hypothesis that salivary insulin might be a simple measure of insulinemia in diabetes. In 8 nondiabetic subjects, salivary insulin levels increased after an oral glucose load but with a delay in peak concentrations of approximately 45 min in comparison with serum insulin levels. There was a significant correlation (r = .810, P less than .01) between mean serum insulin and the salivary insulin 30 min later. In 12 type I diabetic patients, day profiles of saliva and serum insulin were obtained during usual insulin treatment, diet, and physical activity. In serum, the mean (+/- SE) percentage of bound insulin was 58.8 +/- 5.2%, and in saliva it was 45 +/- 3.5%. The mean ratio of salivary to serum free insulin throughout the day was 1:1.6. Although there was a significant correlation (r = .913, P less than .001) between mean serum free insulin for all patients and the corresponding mean free salivary insulin, several individual profiles showed marked discrepancies between the timing and magnitude of insulin changes in the two compartments. We would not, therefore, recommend salivary insulin concentrations as a reliable index of insulinemia in individuals with type I diabetes.

The interaction between chronic oral slow-release theophylline and single-dose intravenous erythromycin.

Eight volunteers were each given 300 mg of erythromycin lactobionate by i.v. infusion over 15 min in the presence and absence of chronic dosing with slow-release theophylline. Pharmacokinetic profiles were obtained for theophylline in the presence and absence of erythromycin and for erythromycin in the presence and absence of theophylline. A very small, clinically unimportant, but statistically significant increase occurred in mean (+/- S.E.M.) serum theophylline concentration from 4.9 +/- 0.3 mg/l to 5.2 +/- 0.3 mg/l in the presence of erythromycin (P = less than 0.01). The theophylline pharmacokinetic parameters did not change significantly. The only changes in erythromycin pharmacokinetics were an increase in the renal excretion (0-12 h) from 5.5 +/- 4.0 mg to 11.2 +/- 6.0 mg (P less than 0.03) and an increase in renal clearance (0-2 h) from 9.0 +/- 6.0 ml/min to 21.6 +/- 15 ml/min (P less than 0.05) in the presence of theophylline.