Ambulatory blood pressure and blood lipids in a multiethnic sample of healthy adults

Objectives Elevated blood pressure (BP), elevated serum cholesterol, and aberrant lipoprotein fractions (low levels of high‐density lipoprotein (HDL) and high levels of low‐density lipoprotein fractions and triglycerides) have all been used as measures that assess the “metabolic syndrome” and more recently in indexes of allostatic load, which are designed to assess the degree of integrated metabolic pathology. While there are ample data regarding the interrelationships of these measures in various pathophysiological settings, there are limited data regarding the interrelationship of ambulatory BP (ABP) and blood lipids in healthy subjects. The present study evaluates ABP‐blood lipid relationships in a multiethnic sample of healthy adults. Methods The subjects were 37 men (age = 40.9 ± 10.7 years) and 42 women (age = 35.8 ± 10.4 years) who were employed as hotel workers in Hawaii. Each wore an ABP monitor for one midweek workday and had pressures averaged in three daily microenvironments (work, home, and during sleep). They also had fasting blood samples taken for lipid profiling. Results Multivariate analysis of covariance shows that there was a strong inverse relationship between HDL and both systolic (P