Psychological characteristics and total cardiovascular risk relationship in a cohort of 345 consecutive hypertensive patients.

Introduction: Health psychology gave strong attention to cardiovascular disease (CVD). Psychological models aim to assess the relationships between CVD and dispositional characteristics (e.g. neuroticism, optimism) and theories on factors influencing behavioural changes (e.g. resilience, self-efficacy beliefs) had been made; but scanty data are available in hypertensive patients (HT). Aim: To investigate possible associations between cardiovascular risk factors and subclinical organ damage and psychological characteristics in a population of Hypertensive patient. Methods: We enrolled 345 consecutive HT outpatients (55 ± 11 years, 57 % males). Medical history, in particular CV risk factors, and presence of subclinical organ damage (LVMI, microalbuminuria, right IMT, cf PWV) were detected to define each patient CV risk. Afterwards, trained researchers submitted individually questionnaires for measuring type D personality (negative affectivity and social withdrawal), resiliency factors (optimism, self-efficacy, self-esteem), anxiety, depression. Than we correlated variables obtained and adjusted for age and sex. Results: Average BP values were well controlled (135 ± 18/82.5 ± 11 mmHg), BMI showed overweight (27±4 g/m2), cfPWV and LVMI were borderline (10.5±2.5 m/s; 110.3 ± 25.8 g/m2), EF was preserved (62 ± 5 %), average total and LDL cholesterol were high (201 ± 33 and 123 ± 30 mg/dl) while rIMT and microalbuminuria were in the normal range (0.73 ± 0.17 mm, 13.6 ± 30.5 mg/24 h). In our population, type D personality was associated with total number of risk factors (r = 0.12, p = 0.04), higher BMI (r = 0.11, p = 0.05), and inversely correlated with EF (r =-0.13, p = 0.04); resiliency factors (self-efficacy and optimism) were inversely correlated with total risk factors number (r =-0.16, p = 0.004), FC (r =-0.12, p = 0.038) and directly with EF (r = 0.16, p = 0.008); anxiety and depression were both associated with the total number of risk factors (r = 0.15, p = 0.009 and r = 0.18, p = 0.001 respectively), while depression was associated also with higher BMI (r = 0.14, p = 0.015), Furthermore, the only organ damage correlated with considered psychological variables was PWV with depression (r = 0.12, p = 0.02). Conclusions: Data collected can be useful to realise tailored programs of primary prevention in treated HT patients. We also obtain evidence of the ability of PWV to describe the current state of the cardiovascular system and its strictly association even with psychological profile.