A Study of Serum Calcium Levels in Essential Hypertension

Abstract

BACKGROUNDAims and Objectives-To study serum total calcium as well as ionic calcium levels in patients with essential hypertension and to correlate serum total calcium levels and ionic calcium levels with other cardiovascular risk factors like BMI and Lipid profile, etc. MATERIALS AND METHODSIt is a descriptive study with 100 newly detected patients of essential hypertension cases and 50 age and sex matched normotensive healthy volunteers as controls. Serum calcium ionic as well as non-ionic was estimated in all the cases and controls along with other parameters. Comparisons were made using student 't' test and chi-square for univariate analysis and multivariate analysis done finally. RESULTSThere was no significant difference between mean level of serum total and ionic calcium in cases and controls in the present study. But study suggested young hypertensives had significantly lower levels of serum total calcium as compared to controls. Also elderly hypertensives had significantly higher levels of serum total calcium as well as ionic calcium compared to young hypertensives. Also, present study suggests that male hypertensives had significantly lower levels of serum total calcium as compared to controls, while female hypertensives had significantly higher levels of serum total calcium as well as ionic calcium compared to male hypertensives. A study showed serum total calcium has significant linear correlation with cardiovascular risk factors like high BMI, high levels of total cholesterol, Triglycerides and low HDL; however, ionic calcium does not have any significant correlation with BMI and lipid profile. CONCLUSIONOur study concludes that though serum calcium total as well as ionic is not associated with hypertension, but regardless of this strong linear correlation of serum total calcium with BMI and hyperlipidaemia may suggest it to be a component of metabolic syndrome.