Use of Drugs for the Treatment of Hypertension

Drugs used to treat Hypertension

There are many types of antihypertensive drugs. Each type has its own merit based on its properties, and doctors take these properties into account when prescribing them to patients with hypertension. Hypertensive drugs make up a large share of the profits made by pharmaceutical companies.

The 4 most common antihypertensive drugs this website will discuss are:

 
Please click the links to the left of this page, or the text above, in order to find out more about them.

 

 

Do Doctors always prescribe one type of drug to treat hypertension?

No - often medical  professionals use a combination of drugs in order to treat hypertension (combination therapy), especially where hypertension is what is described as "resistant hypertension" - it does not respond to treatment well. They will also use combinations of drugs where single drug therapies are not tolerated by the patient, and side effects are seen.

Often, when using a single drug treatment fails, 2 drugs will be prescribed in lower doses. Where this fails the doses are lowered again and a third drug is used. In this way it is possible to get enough "net" reduction in blood pressure by using several different pharmacological mechanisms, without getting high enough active concentrations of each drug to give negative side effects.

This way of treating a patient is not ideal - some patients find it difficult to adhere to their treatment and take all their drugs on time. Some drug companies have recognised the need for combination therapy, and produce products containing doses of multiple drugs in a single pill. The difficulty of using combinatorial approaches is especially complicated in elderly patients, where they often have what is termed "polypharmacy" - they are prescribed too many different medications, more than they need!

 

 

 

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