Repeated automatic versus ambulatory blood pressure measurement:the effects of age and sex in a normal ageing population

Objectives To study blood pressure adaptation in relation to age and sex, In a subsample, laboratory blood pressure measurements were compared with ambulatory daytime blood pressure measurements to determine the degree of agreement between the two methods, The night-time blood pressure reduction was analysed as a function of blood pressure status, age and sex.Design A cross-sectional study in 469 healthy volunteers, aged 23-82 years, stratified for age, sex and educational level.Methods Laboratory blood pressure was measured automatically (Dinamap 8100) five times during a 20min recording session, Cardiovascular events in the medical history were identified in order to treat the cardiovascular event-free group separately in subsequent analyses, Within 3 weeks after laboratory blood pressure measurement, ambulatory blood pressure was measured for 24h in 135 volunteers from the main study.Results Both diastolic and systolic blood pressure varied markedly in a single measurement session as a function of age, independent of mean pressure level, After 15min no further blood pressure decrease was observed, On the basis of the average of the final two blood pressure measurements, 18.8% of the subjects were in the hypertensive range (WHO/ISH guidelines). Ambulatory blood pressure measurements were in accord with earlier findings and correlated 0.74 and 0.73 with laboratory diastolic and systolic blood pressure, respectively, but weighted kappa values indicated only moderate agreement (0.42 and 0.51), Women showed a more profound reduction in cnight-time blood pressure than did men.Conclusions There is a substantial change in blood pressure during a single measurement session which is greater in older age groups, The moderate agreement between the two methods of blood pressure measurement supports the notion that blood pressure measured in a single session has limited generalizability to average daytime levels in a population sample

The Complete Nucleotide Sequence of the Coffee (Coffea Arabica L.) Chloroplast Genome: Organization and Implications for Biotechnology and Phylogenetic Relationships Amongst Angiosperms

The chloroplast genome sequence of Coffea arabica L., the first sequenced member of the fourth largest family of angiosperms, Rubiaceae, is reported. The genome is 155 189 bp in length, including a pair of inverted repeats of 25 943 bp. Of the 130 genes present, 112 are distinct and 18 are duplicated in the inverted repeat. The coding region comprises 79 protein genes, 29 transfer RNA genes, four ribosomal RNA genes and 18 genes containing introns (three with three exons). Repeat analysis revealed five direct and three inverted repeats of 30 bp or longer with a sequence identity of 90% or more. Comparisons of the coffee chloroplast genome with sequenced genomes of the closely related family Solanaceae indicated that coffee has a portion of rps19 duplicated in the inverted repeat and an intact copy of infA. Furthermore, whole-genome comparisons identified large indels (\u3e 500 bp) in several intergenic spacer regions and introns in the Solanaceae, including trnE (UUC)–trnT (GGU) spacer, ycf4–cemA spacer, trnI (GAU) intron and rrn5–trnR (ACG) spacer. Phylogenetic analyses based on the DNA sequences of 61 protein-coding genes for 35 taxa, performed using both maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood methods, strongly supported the monophyly of several major clades of angiosperms, including monocots, eudicots, rosids, asterids, eurosids II, and euasterids I and II. Coffea (Rubiaceae, Gentianales) is only the second order sampled from the euasterid I clade. The availability of the complete chloroplast genome of coffee provides regulatory and intergenic spacer sequences for utilization in chloroplast genetic engineering to improve this important crop

Self-reported physical activity, subjective health, and cognitive performance in older adults

The literature to date suggests a positive relationship between physiological indicators of physical fitness (such as aerobic capacity) and indices of cognitive performance. However, the complexity and cost of methods to measure physical fitness prohibit their use in large-population studies in cognitive aging research. In this study, a questionnaire measuring habitual physical activity was used as an indirect estimate of physical fitness, to predict performance in several cognitive domains in an age- and sex-stratified sample of 80 healthy older adults (55 years and older). Age effects were found on several measures of cognitive speed and fluency, but not on memory performance. Women were slower in sensorimotor speed than men but scored higher on memory tasks. No main effects of activity on cognitive measures were found, but two measures that assessed cognitive speed were sensitive to the age-by-activity interaction term. Subjective health also appeared to contribute to the explained variance in the same two indices of cognitive speed. Limitations of the use of activity questionnaires in cognitive aging research are discussed