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Background and Purpose— Prehypertension has been recently introduced by JNC 7 as a new blood pressure (BP) category, associated with increased target-organ damage. Subclinical atherosclerosis by means of common artery intima-media thickness (CCA-IMT) has been incompletely investigated in prehypertensive patients. The aim of our study was to assess the extent of CCA-IMT and left ventricular mass (LVM) in prehypertensive adults in comparison to normotensive and untreated hypertensive subjects.

Methods— From a total of 5221 consecutive patients screened to our Hypertension Unit we selected 896 consecutive individuals according to prespecified inclusion criteria, who underwent 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring, carotid artery ultrasonographic, and echocardiographic measurements. Patients who received antihypertensive treatment during the BP monitoring were excluded. According to the …