Concomitant considerations in long-term antihypertensive treatment.

Even with antihypertensive therapy, the risks in hypertensive patients, especially the incidence of coronary events, cannot be lowered to that of the normotensive population. Therefore, the metabolic effects of long-term therapy on lipid metabolism and the efficacy of antihypertensive drugs to lower blood pressure were studied as possible explanations for this partial therapeutic failure. Hypertensive patients who participated in a long-term trial provided a unique opportunity to observe the effects of long-term treatment and of then discontinuing antihypertensive therapy. During treatment, increases in total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and triglycerides following hydrochlorothiazide, and increases of LDL-C and triglycerides and a decrease of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) following atenolol were observed up to 42 months. After 5.2 +/- 1.4 years of randomised antihypertensive treatment, cessation of hydrochlorothiazide led to a decrease of total cholesterol from 6.40 to 5.98 mmol/l and of LDL-C from 4.33 to 3.89 mmol/l. After discontinuation of atenolol, LDL-C decreased from 4.20 to 3.89 mmol/l and triglycerides from 2.21 to 1.91 mmol/l, whereas HDL-C increased from 0.96 to 1.17 mmol/l (all differences significant). Thus the adverse effects of both agents persisted for more than five years and were reversible after medication was discontinued. In recent years titration to the lowest possible dose of antihypertensive agents has been suggested to avoid adverse metabolic alterations and subjective side effects.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)