Manidipine: A different dihydropyridine

Blood pressure (BP) plays an important role in the development and progression of cardiovascular disease. Moreover, hypertensive patients often have additional cardiovascular risk factors. Despite the abundance of antihypertensive drug categories, satisfactory BP regulation is often difficult to achieve. A major cause of this difficulty to properly manage BP is the less than optimal adherence of subjects to treatment. This is often due to the various adverse effects of the antihypertensive drugs. Calcium channel blockers (CCB) have an established efficacy for reducing BP. However, their side effect of peripheral edema is often a cause for the discontinuation of treatment. Manidipine holds some unique properties differentiating it from the rest of the CCB class. It has a better safety profile with a lower incidence of peripheral edema. Moreover, there are indications that manidipine holds additional beneficial attributes, such as improvement of renal function and decrease of insulin resistance.