Familial aggregation of blood pressure and heart rate responses during behavioral stress.

Parent-offspring and sibling resemblances in blood pressure and heart rate responses to behavioral stress were evaluated in a sample of 142 families residing in an upper-middle-class community in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area between 1983 and 1985. The sample consisted of 121 daughters and 96 sons ranging in age from 7 to 18 years, and 141 mothers and 119 fathers ranging in age from 31 to 62 years. Three stressors were presented to all participants: serial subtraction, mirror image tracing, and isometric handgrip exercise. Multivariate analyses of the stress responses were based on maximum likelihood estimations of the magnitude of association, which provided collective significance tests, and were adjusted for familial resemblance of resting pressure and heart rate as well as body mass index. These analyses showed significant parent-offspring and sibling associations in resting blood pressure and body mass index, which replicate those found in previous epidemiological investigations. The novel findings in this study were the sibling similarities in heart rate responses to mirror image tracing and in systolic blood pressure responses to isometric handgrip exercise. An analysis of a subset of the sample--only those nonmedicated parents compliant with instructions not to smoke or drink caffeinated or alcoholic beverages for 3 hr prior to testing and their children--showed a parent-offspring resemblance in systolic blood pressure responses to isometric exercise. This analysis, along with the significant sibling association from the full sample, suggests that systolic blood pressure responses to static exercise might aggregate in the family. The results are discussed in light of previous twin data. The relative paucity of significant parent-offspring associations of physiological parameters during serial subtraction and mirror image tracing tasks implies that non-familial influences are most important in determining cardiovascular responses to psychological stress.

Type A behavior pattern, parental history of hypertension, and cardiovascular reactivity in college males.

Two risk factors for cardiovascular disorders, parental history of hypertension and the Type A behavior pattern, were investigated concurrently with respect to cardiovascular reactivity to challenging situations. Sixty-four college males were given both the Structured Interview (SI) and Jenkins Activity Survey (JAS) for the Type A behavior pattern and a family health questionnaire to determine parental history of hypertension. The students were monitored for blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and pulse transit time (PTT) response to four tasks: cold pressor, isometric handgrip exercise, a reading comprehension task, and backwards digit span. Type As based on SI classification had significantly higher HR levels across all tasks than did Type Bs, as well as higher diastolic BP levels in the cold pressor task. No main effects for Type A-B using JAS classification were found. Positive parental history students had higher HR and shorter PTT levels across all the tasks. Type A and parental history did interact in a limited way on some tasks, but the interactions were also dependent on the Type A classification used.

Family characteristics and school achievements of type A children.

We examined the familial characteristics of Type A children and the consequences of Type A behaviors for children's classroom achievements. A maximum of 156 boys and 190 girls enrolled in elementary and middle schools and their parents participated in various aspects of the data collection procedures and analyses reported in this article. Results showed that Type A children were not more likely to have families with a history of cardiovascular-related diseases or families of upper socioeconomic status. Young Type A boys, but not girls, had Type A mothers and fathers, suggesting an early modeling of Type A behaviors by boys. Competitive boys and girls and Type A girls had higher achievement test scores and classroom grades, independent of IQ test scores, than did relatively noncompetitive children and Type B girls, respectively. Thus, the competitive aspect of Type A leads to important early achievements, independent of ability, perhaps because care givers and teachers respond to Type A behaviors of children by encouraging them to continue to strive to achieve. Gender differences in the findings were also discussed and related to the adult literature.