Treatment of essential hypertension in general practice: an open-label study of 47,351 French hypertensive patients treated for one year with perindopril.

The efficacy and acceptability of perindopril were assessed over one year by 4800 French general practitioners in an open label study of 47,351 freely consenting adults with mild to moderate hypertension. Perindopril was administered as a single daily dose each morning. The starting dose of 4 mg (or 2 mg in patients over 70 years) was doubled after one month, to a maximum of 8 mg if diastolic blood pressure (DBP) was greater than 95 mmHg. Thereafter a non-potassium sparing diuretic was added to the 8 mg dose if necessary. At 12 months, effective blood pressure control, defined as recumbent DBP below 90 mmHg, was achieved in between 68 and 77% of patients. The majority of patients (80% [n = 37,348]) received perindopril alone throughout the 12-month study period. The final prescription (at six months) revealed that 65% of patients were treated with the once daily 4 mg dose. Throughout the 12 months of the study, 7.6% of patients (n = 3564) discontinued treatment, 5.1% (n = 2401) due to adverse events and 0.4% (n = 187) due to fatal events (principally cardiovascular reasons). Cough was the most frequent adverse symptom, leading to withdrawal of 3.28% of patients; this symptom was spontaneously reported in an additional 6.4% of patients throughout the one-year period but did not lead to discontinuation. All other adverse events leading to withdrawal were present in less than 0.4% of cases. The majority of fatal outcomes was due to cardiovascular events (n = 78), 37 were due to cancer, 19 due to road accidents and 53 due to miscellaneous causes.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)