title: Bimodality of blood pressure levels.
abstract: I examine distribution of systolic blood pressure by means of maximum likelihood fitting of various statistical models to the extensive data of Bøe et al., and find evidence for a compound or mixed log-normal distribution, rather than the single log-normal distribution proposed by Pickering. I find a second distribution with a mean blood pressure above the ordinary range. I demonstrate further evidence for the existence of this subgroup in the abnormalities of regression to the mean found in the same data set.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D001794:Blood Pressure; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012016:Reference Values; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012737:Sex Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013599:Systole