We observed 1104 subjects of the Portuguese population coming from two adjacent cities in the north: Guimarães and Vizela. They were randomly selected from the population to be included in a cohort representative of the age and gender distribution. We evaluated their age, sex, clinical history, blood pressure (BP) (mean of three measurements), height, weight, lipidic profile, fasting glucose, HbA1c, serum creatinine, microalbuminuria (occasional sample); we also performed Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) measurements (Sphygmocor®).

These 1104 subjects (56,4% females), had a mean global age of 47,6 years (18 – 94); 42% had hypertension, 10,7% had Diabetes, 80% had lipidic profile abnormalities, 3,1% had GFR < 60ml/min and 16,1% had microalbuminuria. The mean brachial systolic BP was 131,3 mmHg (84 to 243) and the mean brachial diastolic BP was 76,7 mmHg (44 to 128); The average BMI was 26,8 kg/m2 (16,8 to 46,2).

The mean PWV value recorded in the population was 7,4 m/sec (4,1 to 18); mean PWV values were distributed as follows, according to the different age classes: 18 to 30 years – 6,1 m/sec (4,1 to 9,7); 31 to 40 years – 6,6 m/sec (4,2 to 13,6); 41 to 50 years – 7,5 m/sec (4,7 to 14,1); 51 to 60 years – 7,5 m/sec (4,6 to 12,3); 61 to 70 years – 9,0 m/sec (4,5 to 18); 71 to 80 years – 9,4 m/sec (5 to 15,4); 81 to 90 years – 10,5 m/sec (6,7 to 15,7). These are, to our knowledge, the first arterial stiffness measurements performed on a population based cohort in Portugal.