成田 圭佑

The diagnosis and management of hypertension have been based primarily on blood pressure (BP) measurement in the office setting. Higher out-of-office BP is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, independent of office BP. Home BP monitoring (HBPM) consists of the measurement of BP by a person outside of the office at home and is a validated approach for out-of-office BP measurement. HBPM provides valuable data for diagnosing and managing hypertension. Another validated approach, ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM), has been considered to be the reference standard of out-of-office BP measurement. However, HBPM offers potential advantages over ABPM including being a better measure of basal BP, wide availability to patients and clinicians, evidence supporting its use for better office BP control, and demonstrated efficacy when using telemonitoring along with HBPM. This state-of-the-art review examines the current state of HBPM and includes discussion of recent hypertension guidelines on HBPM, advantages of using telemonitoring with HBPM, use of self-titration of antihypertensive medication with HBPM, validation of HBPM devices, best practices for conducting HBPM in the clinical setting, how HBPM can be used as an implementation strategy approach to improve BP control in the United States, health equity in HBPM use, and HBPM use among specific populations. Finally, research gaps and future directions of HBPM are reviewed.

We investigated whether the combination of medical therapy plus percutaneous transluminal renal angioplasty (PTRA) provides superior clinical outcomes compared to those afforded by medical therapy alone in patients with hypertension due to atherosclerotic renal artery stenosis (ARAS) by conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the relevant randomized controlled trials (RCTs). The evaluated outcomes included: (1) cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related mortality, (2) the incidence of CVD events, (3) changes in blood pressure (BP), (4) suppression of renal function decline, (5) changes in the number of antihypertensive drugs used, and (6) serious adverse events. Nine RCTs involving 2275 patients were analyzed, revealing that the combination therapy significantly reduced the number of antihypertensive drugs compared to medical therapy alone (mean difference: -0.42, 95% confidence interval: -0.71 to -0.12). However, there were no significant differences between the combination therapy and medical therapy alone in CVD mortality, the incidence of CVD events, BP changes, suppression of renal function decline, or serious adverse events. The included studies demonstrated a low-to-moderate risk of bias, with performance and detection bias being the most prominent concerns. Together our findings demonstrate that compared to medical therapy alone, the combination of medical therapy + PTRA reduced the number of antihypertensive drugs used but did not improve adverse CVD or renal outcomes. The quality of the included RCTs represents a potential limitation of this analysis.

BACKGROUND: The 2017 American College of Cardiology (ACC)/American Heart Association (AHA) BP guideline recommends ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) for diagnosing masked hypertension among adults not taking antihypertensive medication with borderline office BP (i.e., office systolic BP [SBP] 120 to <130 mmHg or diastolic BP [DBP] 75 to <80 mmHg). METHODS: Using data from the Improving the Detection of Hypertension Study, sensitivity (SN), specificity (SP), positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV), and likelihood ratios for a positive and negative test of having borderline office BP (i.e. office SBP 120 to <130 mmHg or DBP 75 to <80 mmHg) for diagnosing masked hypertension (i.e. mean awake SBP ≥130 mmHg or mean awake DBP ≥80 mmHg) were determined among 263 participants who had a mean office SBP <130 mmHg and mean DBP <80 mmHg. Likelihood ratios for a positive test >10, 5 to 10, and <5 were considered strong, moderate, and weak, respectively. Likelihood ratios for a negative test <0.1, 0.1 to 0.2, and >0.2 were considered strong, moderate, and weak, respectively. RESULTS: Among the 263 participants, mean±SD age was 39.2±12.8 years, 62.4% were female, 38.4% had borderline office BP, and 26.2% had masked hypertension. SN, SP, PPV, and NPV were 0.754, 0.747, 0.515, and 0.895, respectively. The likelihood ratios for a positive and negative test were 2.984 (weak) and 0.330 (weak), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The use of borderline office BP thresholds recommended in the 2017 ACC/AHA BP guideline did not sufficiently rule in or rule out masked hypertension.

Previous studies have reported that blood pressure variability (BPV) is associated with the risk of cardiovascular events independent of blood pressure (BP) levels. While there is little evidence from intervention trials examining whether suppressing BPV is useful in preventing cardiovascular disease, it is suggested that detection of abnormally elevated BPV may be useful in reducing cardiovascular events adding by complementing management of appropriate BP levels. Cuffless BP devices can assess beat-to-beat BPV. Although cuffless BP monitoring devices have measurement accuracy issues that need to be resolved, this is an area of research where the evidence is accumulating rapidly, with many publications on beat-to-beat BPV over several decades. Ambulatory BP monitoring (ABPM) can assess 24-hour BPV and nocturnal dipping patterns. Day-to-day BPV and visit-to-visit BPV are assessed by self-measured BP monitoring at home and office BP measurement, respectively. 24 h, day-to-day, and visit-to-visit BPV have been reported to be associated with cardiovascular prognosis. Although there have been several studies comparing whether ABPM and self-measured BP monitoring at home is the superior measurement method of BPV, no strong evidence has been accumulated that indicates whether ABPM or self-measured home BP is superior. ABPM and self-measured BP monitoring have their own advantages and complement each other in the assessment of BPV.

There is growing evidence that nocturnal hypertension is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, including heart failure. However, brachial blood pressure (BP) measurements during sleep might themselves disturb sleep quality. We initiated a nationwide, multicenter observational prospective study using a wrist-type oscillometric nighttime BP monitoring device with new algorithms to measure supine BP accurately without sleep disturbance. This study, named the Wrist ICT-based Sleep and Circadian Blood Pressure Monitoring Program-Night BP Study (WISDOM-Night Study), was designed to clarify the impact of wrist-measured daily nighttime BPs on cardiovascular prognosis (stroke, coronary artery disease, heart failure, etc.) using 7 days of BP measurements at 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m., and 4 h after bedtime. A total of 2751 patients with one or more cardiovascular risk factors were recruited between March 2021 and March 2024 and are currently being followed up for 7 years. Additionally, 1416 of the WISDOM-Night Study-enrolled patients who also agreed to participate in the WISDOM-Hypertension-Mediated Organ Damage (HMOD) Study underwent echocardiography to evaluate the association between wrist-measured BP and left ventricular structure. Data from this WISDOM-Night Study should provide the prospective association between nighttime BP and cardiovascular disease and reveal the indexes of nighttime BP with clinical pathological relevance. This first report of the WISDOM-Night Study describes the study design, baseline characteristics, and BP control status.