Association between delayed recovery of blood pressure after acute mental stress and parental history of hypertension

Objective: To assess the influence of sex, race and parental history of hypertension on blood pressure and heart rate elevations during a Stressor, and on the recovery of prestress baseline levels for these parameters. Design: Five hundred and thirty-seven university undergraduates underwent cardio- vascular reactivity testing. A serial-subtraction task served as the Stressor. Reactivity was assessed as the difference between baseline and during-task levels, and recovery as the difference between baseline and post-stress levels. Methods: The influence of sex, race and parental history of hypertension on reactivity and recovery was assessed, using analysis of variance models. Results: No differences were found in reactivity for any of the factors. For recovery, a significant effect was found for parental history of hypertension on systolic blood pressure and a marginal effect on diastolic blood pressure. Post hoc tests revealed that values in groups with two hypertensive parents remained elevated at a significantly higher level than in offspring with either no or one hypertensive parent. Conclusion: Parental history of hypertension may affect the duration of the blood pressure response to an acute Stressor more than the magnitude of the response.