Efficacité comparée des trois stratégies antihypertensives recommandées en Europe

The latest European Guidelines for the treatment of hypertension recommend the use of low-dose combination therapies as the first line strategy.This paper presents the preliminary results of a recent study comparing the perindopril/indapamide combination treatment with sequential and step by step strategies. The 9-month randomised double-blind study included 533 patients.Patients were shown to have better blood pressure control without adverse effects following treatment with the perindopril/indapamide combination than with the sequential strategy of atenolol (50 mg) then losartan (50 mg) then amlodipine (5 mg) or with the step-by-step strategy of valsartan (40 mg then 80 mg, then 80 mg plus hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg). In addition, the perindopril/indapamide combination was shown to induce significantly greater control of systolic blood pressure levels with comparable effects on diastolic blood pressure.