MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Paolo Palatini, M.D. Professor of Internal Medicine University of Padova Padova, Italy  MedicalResearch.com:  What is the background for this study?  Response: Up to now doctors measured blood pressure (BP) on standing only in elderly people on pharmacological treatment with the purpose of detecting orthostatic hypotension. In young-to-middle-age people BP is currently measured only in the lying or the sitting posture. Our starting point was that young borderline hypertensive people have an increased sympathetic activity and thus they might be hyperreactive to physical stimuli such as assuming the orthostatic posture which may be deleterious in the long run. This hypothesis was tested in the HARVEST, a study initiated in Italy in 1990, in which over 1200 young patients screened for stage 1 hypertension were enrolled. (more…)