BACKGROUND

Hypertension is a chronic disease widely approached and related with several organic dysfunctions, brain damage and its cognitive performance among them. Nowadays we count with dispositives that can do arterial measures in an ambulatory form for 24 hours, which opens a path to study the circadian patterns and their possible consequences.

OBJECTIVE

To compare the cognitive performance between patients with physiologic and pathologic arterial circadian patterns in the inhabitants of a rural community in Yucatan.

MATERIAL AND METHOD

A clinical epidemiologic study, with observational analytic transversal and prospective design was done from January to December 2016. There were performed ambulatory arterial records of 24 hours in patients older than 50 years without previous diagnosis of hypertension. Then the RBANS (Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status) battery was applied to them.

RESULTS

There were performed 30 ambulatory arterial records. We found a significant difference (p = 0.028) with the Pearson’s X2 when contrasting the cognitive performance amount the circadian physiologic and pathologic patterns. It showed a bigger frequency of higher cognitive performance amount the patients with pathologic circadian patterns.

CONCLUSIONS

Patients seem to have a higher cognitive performance with a higher decline in their night arterial pressure. This could be explainef by the lack of an established limit to differentiate a physiologic arterial pressure decline with the pathologic one among adults in the middle age.

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