Blood Pressure, Heart Rate Variability & Sleep in Veterans With PTSD
Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01920451. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.
Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.
Official title
Is Reduced Blood Pressure a Consequence of Improved Sleep in Veterans With PTSD?
Brief summary
Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.
Sleep disturbance and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common conditions in returning Veterans, and both conditions are known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Research suggests that those with insomnia are at triple the risk of high blood pressure as compared to normal sleepers, and that having both insomnia and short sleep increases this risk to more than five times that of normal sleepers. These research findings suggest that recently deployed Veterans with insomnia may be at increased risk of developing high blood pressure, and this possibility is consistent with previous research. Vietnam era Veterans with combat-related PTSD assessed in 1985 were twice as likely to have died of early-onset heart disease relative to their non-PTSD counterparts when reassessed in 2000. Evidence for impaired cardiac function in individuals with PTSD has been demonstrated across several studies as well. Compared to individuals without PTSD, those with PTSD seem to have lesser reaction to stress in terms of both heart rate and heart beat pattern. However, there has been very little research examining the impact of behavioral sleep interventions on health outcomes, and even fewer that are specific to a PTSD or Veteran population. The purpose of this study is to determine if treating insomnia results in improved blood pressure and cardiac function in recently deployed Veterans with PTSD. The findings of this research will serve as pilot data for a future grant application testing the efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBTI) for reducing cardiovascular risk in Veterans with PTSD using a full-scale randomized trial design. We are hypothesizing that improved sleep will be significantly associated with improved blood pressure and increased heart rate variability (improved autonomic function) in adults receiving CBTI compared to those in a wait-list control condition.
Study identification
- NCT ID
- NCT01920451
- Recruitment status
- Terminated
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Not applicable
- Enrollment
- 19 participants
Conditions and interventions
Eligibility (public fields only)
- Age range
- 21 Years to 65 Years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Healthy volunteers not accepted
This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.
Study timeline
- Start date
- Jul 31, 2013
- Primary completion
- Jul 31, 2014
- Completion
- Jul 31, 2014
- Last update posted
- Aug 5, 2014
2013 – 2014
United States locations
- U.S. sites
- 1
- U.S. states
- 1
- U.S. cities
- 1
| Facility | City | State | ZIP | Site status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Durham VA Medical Center | Durham | North Carolina | 27705 | — |
Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.
About this trial record page
- What this page shows
- Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT01920451, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
- What this page does not do
- No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
- Where the data comes from
- Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
- Last refresh
- Last update posted Aug 5, 2014 · Synced Sep 7, 2026
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Open the official record
The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT01920451 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.