Adolescent girls may be better protected against the effects of stress than teenage boys, according to a team of Georgia researchers. In a study of teenagers' responses to mental stress, they found that girls did not exhibit the same increase in blood pressure as did their male peers.

"Very few studies have reported a teenager's response to prolonged mental stress," Dr. Gaston Kapuku, of the Medical College of Georgia said in a statement. "Our findings indicate that females are protected against the effects of stress as demonstrated by their ability to maintain lower blood pressure."

The findings were presented Sunday during this year's meeting of the International Society on Hypertension in Blacks (ISHIB), held in Puerto Rico.

For the study, 190 African-American and European-American teenagers, aged 16 to 18 years, with normal blood pressures spent 60 minutes playing a competitive video game. The researchers measured the teenagers' blood pressure and heart rates at 15-minute intervals during the two-hour rest period before they began the stress activity -- i.e., playing the video game -- as well as during the game, analyzing the change that occurred between the two periods.

Based on heart rate alone, teenage boys and girls appear to react similarly to mental stress, the results indicate. Girls had a slightly higher heart rate than did their male counterparts, but both groups seemed to be equally stimulated by the game.

Changes in systolic blood pressure -- i.e., the upper reading, pressure when the heart contracts -- varied between the sexes, however, with teenage girls exhibiting smaller changes in blood pressure than did teenage boys.

"Girls have some kind of protection in terms of blood pressure response," Kapuku told Reuters Health. He added that "people who react with high blood pressure are prone to develop more cardiovascular disease."

White girls had even smaller changes in blood pressure than did black girls, the study findings show. The reason for this "puzzle" is unknown, Kapuku said, although it might be related to differences in hormones or a number of other pathways that influence stress reactions.

Other research has also pointed to the existence of ethnic and sex differences in cardiovascular disease. Heart failure, for example, has been found to be more prevalent among women in comparison to men. Further, blacks are known to have a higher incidence of premature heart attack, high blood pressure and other factors that put them at risk for cardiovascular disease.

The new findings suggest there is "already a difference in childhood," in such risk factors, Kapuku said.

In light of these findings, Kapuku advises that patients, especially those with heart disease, determine their doctor's knowledge of ethnic and sex differences by asking if they will receive the same treatment or if they are expected to respond to treatment in the same way as patients of the opposite sex or a different ethnicity.

In so doing, he said, they can have a "better chance of better care."