The impact of exercise interventions on blood pressure and determinants of BP change in different clinical populations.

Hypertension remains the leading risk factor for cardiovascular mortality. During the last decades, research has provided insight on the potency of exercise as a blood pressure lowering intervention.  Though, the majority of these studies had office blood pressure as an outcome. Today, management of hypertension is guided and based on ambulatory blood pressure measurements. However, little data is available on the efficacy of exercise therapy on ambulatory blood pressure. Moreover, research has mainly focused on populations with solely hypertension, whereas in today’s clinical practice many patients with hypertension present with several co-morbidities including diabetes, peripheral arterial disease and are treated with antihypertensive medication. Little is known about the effectiveness of exercise interventions on blood pressure in these clinical populations. This PhD project aims to 1) summarize the available evidence with regard to the effect of exercise therapy on ambulatory blood pressure, 2) evaluate the impact of a hybrid exercise intervention on blood pressure and explore determinants of the change in blood pressure in patients along the continuum of heart failure 3) evaluate the effectiveness of exercise interventions on ABMP in 1) patients with diabetes and hypertension and 2) patients following abdominal transplantation and at risk for hypertension.