Psychological stress and long-term blood pressure variability of military young males: The cardiorespiratory fitness and hospitalization events in armed forces study

BACKGROUND: Acute stress might increase short-term heart rate variability and blood pressure variability (BPV); however, chronic stress would not alter short-term BPV in animal models. AIM: To examine the association of psychological stress with long-term BPV in young male humans. METHODS: We prospectively examined the association of chronic psychological stress with long-term BPV in 1112 healthy military males, averaged 32.2 years from the cardiorespiratory fitness and hospitalization events in armed forces study in Taiwan. Psychological stress was quantitatively evaluated with the Brief Symptom Rating Scale (BSRS-5), from the least symptom of 0 to the most severe of 20, and the five components of anxiety, insomnia, depression, interpersonal sensitivity, and hostility (the severity score in each component from 0 to 4). Long-term BPV was assessed by standard deviation (SD) for systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and average real variability (ARV), defined as the average absolute difference between successive measurements of SBP or DBP, across four visits in the study period from 2012 to 2018 (2012-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-18). RESULTS: The results of multivariable linear regressions showed that there were no correlations of the BSRS-5 score with SD(SBP), SD(DBP), ARV(SBP), and ARV(DBP )after adjusting for all the covariates [β(SE): -0.022 (0.024), -0.023 (0.026), -0.001 (0.018), and 0.001 (0.020), respectively; P > 0.05 for all]. In addition, there were also no correlations between each component of the BSRS score and the long-term BPV indexes. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that chronic psychological stress might not be associated with long-term BPV in military young male humans.