Sanidas E, et al. - Given the involvement of low apelin and relaxin plasma levels in vascular damage that has been reported recently, researchers compared these levels between patients with masked hypertension (MH) and those with white coat hypertension (WCH) in this study population including 130 patients not on antihypertensive therapy and with 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (BP) monitoring and office BP measurements. They used ELISA to record plasma apelin and relaxin levels. MH was detected in 24 subjects (group A) and WCH in 32 (group B). Findings revealed significantly lower plasma levels of apelin (200 ± 111 pg/mL vs 305 ± 127 pg/mL, P < 0.01) and relaxin (35.2 ± 6.7 pg/mL vs 46.8 ± 23.6 pg/mL, P < 0.01) in patients with MH vs those with WCH, respectively. An additional prognostic role for adipokines was suggested on the basis of this finding and this further implies that MH is closer to essential hypertension while WCH is more benign.