A physician of TCHSC performed standardized resting BP measure- ments during each visit. Briefly, participants rested in a sitting position in a quiet room for at least 10 min before left upper arm BP was mea- sured using a mercury sphygmomanometer at least three times with a 2-min minimum interval between measurements. In most cases the second and third sets of readings were averaged to calculate the systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) (Rioux et al., 2010). However, if the difference between the SBP or DBP values of the second and third measurements was N5 mm Hg, the BP was considered unstable, and another 1 to 3 measurements were taken until the difference between the last two measurements was ≤5 mm Hg. The pulse pressure (PP) was calculated as the difference between the average SBP and DBP values.