US adults -- especially women -- have seen a rise in blood pressure during the coronavirus pandemic, a new study suggests.

The study, published Monday in the journal Circulation, included data on 464,585 employees and their spouses or partners from several different companies who participated in employer-sponsored wellness programs by Quest Diagnostics each year.

As part of the programs, workers and their partners from all 50 states and the District of Columbia had their blood pressure measured for three years in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at Cleveland Clinic, and his colleagues at Cleveland Clinic and Quest Diagnostics examined those blood pressure readings.

The researchers found that the blood pressure readings appeared to be significantly higher during the pandemic in April through December of 2020 compared with in 2019, with increases ranging on average from 1.1 to 2.5 millimeters of mercury or mmHg for systolic blood pressure and 0.14 to 0.53 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure.

Blood pressure is measured in units of mmHg, which consists of two numbers -- the upper or systolic reading and the lower or diastolic reading.

While systolic and diastolic blood pressure increases were seen for both men and women and across age groups, the researchers found larger increases among women.

"We did see more pronounced increases in blood pressure in women. Now, we don't know the exact reason for that. However, we do know and there's data to suggest that the pandemic has tended to place more of an outsized burden on women, particularly women that work, and this is an employer-sponsored wellness program," Laffin said.

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