The association of reduced lung function with blood pressure variability in African Americans: data from the Jackson Heart Study

BACKGROUND: African Americans (AAs) have lower lung function, higher blood pressure variability (BPV) and increased risk for hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD) compared with whites. The mechanism through which reduced lung-function is associated with increased CVD risk is unclear. METHODS: We evaluated the association between percent predicted lung-function and 24-hour BPV in 1008 AAs enrolled in the Jackson Heart Study who underwent ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring. Lung-function was assessed as forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC) and the ratio of FEV1-to-FVC during a pulmonary function test using a dry rolling sealed spirometer and grouped into gender-specific quartiles. The pairwise associations of these three lung-function measures with two measures of 24-hour BPV, (1) day-night standard deviation (SD(dn)) and (2) average real variability (ARV) were examined for systolic BP (SBP) and, separately, diastolic BP (DBP). RESULTS: SD(dn) of SBP was not associated with FEV1 (mean ± standard deviation from lowest-to-highest quartile: 9.5 ± 2.5, 9.4 ± 2.4, 9.1 ± 2.3, 9.3 ± 2.6; p-trend = 0.111). After age and sex adjustment, the difference in SD(dn) of SBP was 0.0 (95 % CI −0.4,0.4), −0.4 (95 % CI −0.8,0.1) and −0.3 (95 % CI −0.7,0.1) in the three progressively higher versus lowest quartiles of FEV1 (p-trend = 0.041). Differences in SD(dn) of SBP across FEV1 quartiles were not statistically significant after further multivariable adjustment. After multivariable adjustment, no association was present between FEV1 and ARV of SBP or SD(dn) and ARV of DBP or when evaluating the association of FVC and FEV1-to-FVC with 24-hour BPV. CONCLUSION: Lung-function was not associated with increased 24-hour BPV. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12872-015-0182-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.