Blood pressure in women may be divided in four different clinical conditions:
1) Blood pressure and pregnancy
2) Blood pressure an oral contraceptives
3) Blood pressure and menopausal hormone therapy
4) Blood pressure and metabolic syndrome
Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy may affect adversely neonatal and maternal oucomes; ABPM24h has been shown to be superior to conventional measurements in diagnosys of gestational hypertension and outcomes.
Oestrogen oral contraceptives are associated with an increased risk of hypertension, stroke and coronary heart disease , in women over 35 years of age and in those with smoke.
The menopausal hormone therapy is beneficial only for a decreased incidence of bone fractures and colon cancer , but is correlated with an high cardiovascular morbidity and mortality (stroke, thromboembolism) and this therapy is not raccomeneded for cardioprotection in postmenopausal women.
The 2007 European Guidelines for Management of Hypertension contain diagnostic and therapeutic raccomendations for the hypertension in women and this is a new important step in the evaluation of females’s health.
