Assessment of a diurnal blood pressure profile in patients with acute Lyme borreliosis

Aim. The purpose of the study was to investigate the character of changes in daily blood pressure profiles and to evaluate the influence of Borrelia burgdorferi infection on the course of essential hypertension in patients with acute stage of Lyme disease. Methods. 37 patients with an acute stage of Lyme disease were examined and broken down in two groups. The first group included 18 patients without essential hypertension. 19 patients with stage !! of essential hypertension were included into group !!. The group of comparison consisted of 32 patients with stage !! of essential hypertension without Lyme disease. 26 healthy volunteers of the control group were comparable in gender and age. results. A significant difference of the average diastolic blood pressure index during night time in patients with acute stage of Lyme disease and essential hypertension 90.0 (68.5-100.0) mm Hg versus the control group 77.0 (65.0-86.0) mm Hg at p = 0.03 was observed. When determining a type of daily blood pressure profile, some features of a blood pressure circadian rhythm were found in all groups of patients. There were ‘Dipper’ (77.7%) and ‘Non-Dipper’ (22.3%) profiles in the group of patients with acute stage of Lyme disease without essential hypertension. No ‘Over-Dipper’ and ‘Night-Peaker’ profiles were recorded in this group. 'Dipper’ (20.0%), ‘Non-Dipper’ (73.4%) and ‘Night-Peaker’ (6.6%) blood pressure profiles were typical for patients with acute stage of Lyme disease and essential hypertension. Conclusion. A 22.3% decrease in the number of patients with a ‘Dipper’ blood pressure daily profile and an equal increase in the number of ‘non-dipper’ patients are characteristic of an acute stage of Lyme disease. The number of ‘Non-Dipper’ patients with essential hypertension and acute stage of Lyme disease increases up to 73.4%. Thus, acute Lyme disease and essential hypertension tend to burden the each other’s course.