The Effects of Short-Term Blood Pressure Variability and Nighttime Blood Pressure Levels on Cognitive Function

We investigated the relationship between 24-h blood pressure (BP) and cognitive function. We performed the Hasegawa Dementia Scale Revised (HDSR), the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), and the Raven’s Coloured Progressive Matrices Test (RCPM) in 88 subjects (71±9 years) with no history of stroke. Ambulatory BP was non-invasively measured using a TM2421 for 24h in all patients. Whereas 90% of the scores converged into a narrow range between 25 and 30 points in the HDSR and the MMSE tests, the RCPM score was widely distributed, ranging from 9 to 36 points. The subjects were therefore divided into three groups of ≥25, 26-30, and 31-36 according to their RCPM scores. Subjects with lower scores were significantly associated with increased short-term BP variability during the daytime (p