Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring versus office blood pressure measurement: Are there sex differences?

The accurate measurement of blood pressure (BP) is an important prerequisite for the reliable diagnosis and efficient management of hypertension and other medical conditions. Office Blood Pressure Measurement (OBP) is a technique performed in-office with the sphygmomanometer, while Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) is a technique that measures blood pressure during 24h. The BP fluctuations also depend on other factors such as physical activity, temperature, mood, age, sex, any pathologies, a hormonal activity that may intrinsically influence the differences between OBP and ABPM. The aim of this study is to examine the possible influence of sex on the discrepancies between OBP and ABPM in 872 subjects with known or suspected hypertension. A significant correlation was observed between OBP and ABPM mean values calculated during the day, night and 24h (ABPMday, ABPMnight, ABPM24h) in both groups (p<0.0001). The main finding of this study is that no difference between sexes was observed in the relation between OBP and mean ABMP values except between systolic OBP and systolic ABPM during the night. In addition, this study showed a moderate correlation between BPs obtained with the two approaches with a great dispersion around the regression line which suggests that the two approaches cannot be used interchangeably.