White coat effect in college students

This study was a systematic replication of the work of Carels, Sherwood, and Blumenthal (1998) who studied white coat hypertension (WCH) in adults with suspected hypertension. The present study utilized healthy African American and Caucasian young adults. Fifty-seven male and female high school and college students (34 Caucasians and 23 African Americans) had their blood pressure screened three times on three separate occasions. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Arousal Predisposition Scale (APS) were administered at the first visit to assess anxiety and arousal. A 3-way multifactorial mixed design ANOVA and multiple regression analyses were performed separately for systolic BP and diastolic BP. Significant main effects for trials, gender, and ethnicity for systolic BP were revealed. Significant main effects were not found for diastolic BP measures, and no interaction effects were revealed for systolic or diastolic measures. Participants\u27 systolic BP decreased from the first screening to the second and third screenings. The main effect for gender indicated significant differences in systolic BP between males and females, with males having higher systolic BP over trials. The significant main effect for ethnicity revealed that African Americans had higher systolic BP than Caucasians. The regression analyses using the scores from the APS, STAI, and BP trial change scores revealed that none of the variables contributed significantly to the change in BP across sessions. The results replicate the finding of Carels et al. (1998) who found SBP declined from Trial 1 to Trials 2 and 3, and provide partial support for a small white coat effect in healthy Caucasian and African American young adults