Ambulatory blood pressure-based inclusion criteria in the Hygia Chronotherapy Trial. Rebuttal to Lemmer and Middeke

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this communication is to respond to the continuing invalid criticism by Lemmer and Middeke of the MAPEC and Hygia Chronotherapy Trial by emphasizing the: (i) already unambiguously reported ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM)-based definition of hypertension utilized as the inclusion criterion of both investigations and (ii) impact of bedtime hypertension chronotherapy on ABPM-assessed parameters and cardiovascular disease (CVD) outcome for participants further categorized by influential markers of CVD risk. In so doing, we call attention to apparent unethical misconduct of Lemmer and Middeke of multiple duplicated publications of the very same unfounded criticisms.

KEYWORDS:

• Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring
• sleep-time blood pressure
• bedtime hypertension chronotherapy
• cardiovascular risk
• Hygia chronotherapy trial
• MAPEC study
• Hygia project

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.