BMJ 1994;309:543 (20 August)

Letters

Nocturnal ambulatory blood pressure measurement Authors' reply

EDITOR, - If we have understood Shennan et al's letter about our recent paper on ambulatory blood pressure during sleep2 correctly, then the main problem is that they have assumed that the orienting reflex which is activated during arousal from sleep is due to the same physiological mechanism as the "white coat effect" while the subject is awake. There is no evidence to support this, and the time courses of the two vascular responses are very different. In addition, Shennan et al suggest that the haemodynamic response to ambulatory blood pressure measurement during the day is less likely to habituate to repetition than the haemodynamic response to measurements during sleep. This is incorrect, since the autonomic effects of arousal from sleep do not habituate with repetition at all (see references 4, 11, and 12 in our original paper), while the "white coat effect" does.

What our paper does show is . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

Over the counter sales of steroid cream and ointment
M Wilcock
BMJ 1994 309: 740. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

  • Wilcock, M (1994). Over the counter sales of steroid cream and ointment. BMJ 309: 740a-740 [Full text]  
Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ