o investigate atherosclerosis in patients with border-line hypertension, 48 borderline hypertensive subjectswithout complications were compared with 38 healthycontrols. The results showed that the carotid thick-ness of tunica intima and media , and atherosclerotic in-dex in patients were significantly higher than that ofcontrols. The analysis of regression revealed thatcarotid atherosclerosis was closely associated with age ,body weight index, smoking, HDL cholesterol, totalcholesterol , oxidized LDL cholesterol and the status ofhypertension. This suggests that borderline hyper-tension could be a important risk factor for atheroscle-rosis and should be treated as early as possible.