What is ABPM?

Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring (ABPM) is a non-invasive technique by which multiple indirect blood pressure readings can be obtained automatically over a 24-hour period with minimal intrusion into a patient's daily activities.

What is it used for?

Historically used in the development of hypertension and cardiovascular drug therapies, ABPM is now increasingly used to assess the cardiovascular/cardiac safety of investigational compounds in several (non-cardiovascular), therapeutic areas

Improved BP Values

The average BP over 24 hours is three times more reproducible than are clinic BP values which allows the number of subjects required in parallel and crossover design studies to be reduced without loss of statistical power.

The 24-hour profile

The 24-hour profile allows the effect of investigational drugs or renal denervation procedures to be assessed, not only over the entire 24-hour period but during specific windows such as daytime, postprandial (or siesta), vesperal (evening), nocturnal and matinal (early morning) windows. As the mechanisms involved in determining BP at different times may differ, drugs can induce different effects in different windows of the BP circadian rhythm.

BP Profile behavior

As blood pressure (BP), is characterized by high variability, a single reading taken at a given time, or even multiple readings obtained on different days, will only partially reflect a subject’s mean blood pressure over a whole day. In contrast, by providing a profile of BP behavior over the 24-hour period rather than the single snapshot provided by clinic BP, ABPM offers several advantages including the detection of white coat responders, elimination of operator variability and absence of placebo response.