Importance of body weight in determining rise and level of blood pressure in postmenopausal women

2007 Guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension: The Task Force for the Management of Arterial Hypertension of the European Society of Hypertension (ESH) and of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC)

“…In Western societies, women show a steeper increase in systolic blood pressure after the menopause, but whether this is due to the effect of age or the menopause is debated because studies that have explored this issue have obtained diverging results, i.e. an association of the menopause with higher blood pressure values, [652][653][654][655] but also no significant blood pressure differences. [656][657][658] The most recent crosssectional study in 18,326 women 652 indicates that the menopause has some blood pressure increasing effects, but this is small (about 3/3 mmHg) and largely masked by the pressor effect of ageing.…”

Blood pressure around the menopause: a population study

“…Although many studies [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] have reported an association of the menopause with higher BP values, a number of other studies have reported no significant difference [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], and a few studies have even reported a lower BP with the menopause [24,31]. Several studies describing a BP increase at menopause have found it to be explained by age [13] or by BMI [16,18] or by a combination of both [14]. Both papers by Staessen et al [10,15] reported the increase in BP at menopause could not be attributed to age.…”

Menopause-related blood pressure increase and its relationship to age and body mass index: the SIMONA epidemiological study

“…Although many crosssectional [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] and longitudinal [8,[12][13][14][15] studies have reported an association of menopause with higher BP values, a number of other cross-sectional [16][17][18] and longitudinal [10,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] studies have reported no significant BP difference, and a few studies have even reported a lower BP with menopause [20,27]. Furthermore, several studies describing a BP increase with menopause have found it to be explained by age [10] or by BMI [13,15] or by a combination of both [11]. Only the two papers by Staessen and colleagues [7,12] reported that the increase in BP at menopause was not explained by age.…”