High blood pressure reasons differ by gender in teens; young adults
Background "Blood pressure is determined mainly by three factors: heart rate; stroke volume, which is the volume of blood pumped by the heart; and the resistance to blood flow through the vessels, called total peripheral resistance. An increase in any one of the three factors can lead to an increase in blood pressure," said study author Catriona Syme, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. "The key takeaway from this study is that, for young and middle-aged women, stroke volume was the main determinant of blood pressure, while, in men, vascular resistance was the main determinant of blood pressure." Syme and colleagues studied 1,347 Canadians from the Saguenay Youth Study, including 911 adolescents and 426 adults ages 36 to 65 years. The researchers used a device that measures beat-by-beat blood pressure and the underlying forces of heart rate, stroke volume and total peripheral resistance. In the ...