Age dependence of therapy result and risk in the treatment of arterial hypertension?

In an open multicenter study, 2,012 patients with mild to moderate essential hypertension were treated for 8 weeks with the beta1-selective blocker bisoprolol. A total of 570 general practitioners participated in this study. A total of 1,597 patients whose resting diastolic blood pressure (DBP) ranged from 95 to 115 mm Hg were considered eligible for this study. Patients received one tablet of bisoprolol (5 mg) o.d. for the first 4 weeks. In patients not responding satisfactorily to treatment, the dose could be increased to 10 mg o.d. for the following 4 weeks. A total of 1,201 patients were evaluated for efficacy and all 2,012 patients were evaluated for tolerability. After 4 weeks of therapy, mean systolic blood pressure (SBP) was lowered significantly from 170+/-15 to 151+/-14 mm Hg, and mean DBP was lowered from 104+/-5 to 92+/-7 mm Hg. A further 4-week treatment lowered the blood pressure even more: mean SBP from 151+/-14 to 144+/-13 mm Hg and mean DBP from 92+/-7 to 88+/-7 mm Hg. The total extent of both SBP and DBP reduction was equal in all age groups and showed no dependency of the initial blood pressure value. At the end of the study. the responder rate was 94.9% in patients aged under 60 years, and 90.6% in patients aged over 60 years. The age group 31-40 years showed the highest responder rate (97.5%). After 8 weeks of treatment, 69.5% of the patients were still on 5 mg of bisoprolol and 27.6% on 10 mg of bisoprolol. Of all 2,012 patients, 11.6% reported side effects such as vertigo, fatigue. gastrointestinal disturbances, and headache. The incidence of adverse drug reactions was highest in the age group 31-40 years. Bisoprolol proved in this study to be an effective and safe antihypertensive agent when given to patients with mild to moderate hypertension for 8 weeks.