asked hypertension is a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases.This cross-sectional study used data from the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Community-Based Cohort Study (conducted in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, from 2013) and included participants with normotension measured at the research center (systolic blood pressure=85 mmHg).However, masked hypertension is sometimes overlooked owing to the requirement for home blood pressure measurements for diagnosing.To reduce undiagnosed masked hypertension, this study assessed the association between depressive symptoms and masked hypertension.The multivariate odds ratio for masked hypertension in the patients with depressive symptoms was 1.72 (95% confidence interval: 1.26-2.34) in male participants and 1.30 (95% confidence interval: 1.06-1.59) in female ones.Depressive symptoms were associated with masked hypertension in individuals with normotension measured at the research center.Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (Japanese version).Of these participants, 1106 (22.1%) without depressive symptoms and 393 (23.2%) with depressive symptoms were categorized to have masked hypertension.Sex-specific and age-adjusted least mean squares for home blood pressure, not for research blood pressure were significantly higher in the group with depressive symptoms in both sex categories.Depressive symptoms may be one of the risk factors for masked hypertension.The study comprised 6705 participants (mean age: 55.7 +- 13.7 years).