Diastolic Dysfunction and Its Implications to Serum Magnesium Changes in Hypertensives

Overtime, Diastolic dysfunction (DD), which is seen in damping blood, and pressure build up within the ventricles has been associated with different disease states including chronic hypertension, coronary heart disease, aging, aortic stenosis, hypertrophic and restrictive cardiomyopathies. Diagnosis is by echocardiography (ECG) and often cumbersome. Howbeit, in acute stages of hypertension, prolongation of ventricular activation time in an ECG session has been described as potential marker for diagnosing DD. Current study was therefore undertaken to investigate ventricular activation time in essentially hypertensive Nigerians. One hundred and sixty two (162) hypertensives were recruited for the study. Their compliance to antihypertensive medication, blood pressure control, and electrocardiographic changes were determined and measured. Venous blood sample was then drawn and placed in special tubes to determine the serum magnesium concentrations, using a standard Colorimetric assay machine, Using the statistical measure of association (correlation), correlation between serum magnesium and ECG parameters was calculated using the Pearson’s correlation coefficient. One way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was also explored in obtaining differences in mean between variables. From our observations, only a weak correlation was found between serum magnesium levels and ECG findings across the study population. This proved statistically insignificant at p < 0.05. Other factors such as antihypertensive medications, duration of blood pressure and the control of blood pressure did not show any significant relationship