Myers MG, et al. - In this study involving 514 untreated patients referred for ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring in routine clinical practice, researchers assessed the link between automated office (AO)BP and awake ambulatory BP, which clinical guidelines consider to be a better predictor of future cardiovascular risk. They obtained AOBP readings and 24-hour ambulatory BP recordings from study participants. They used linear regression analysis with and without adjustment for age and sex to examine the aforementioned link. They mainly focused on the thresholds of 130/80 mmHg and 135/85 mmHg, the latter value being the recognized threshold for defining hypertension using awake ambulatory BP, home BP, and AOBP in other guidelines. According to findings, the mean adjusted AOBP of 130/80 mmHg and 135/85 mmHg corresponded to mean awake ambulatory BP values of 132.1/81.5 mmHg and 134.4/84.6 mmHg, respectively. In this study, AOBP qualified as method of choice for determining office BP in routine clinical practice, irrespective of which of the two thresholds were used for diagnosing hypertension. They also noted that an AOBP of 135/85 mmHg was somewhat closer to the corresponding value for awake ambulatory BP.