Why the study?
Does switching to a fixed-dose combination of an ARB and amlodipine improve home blood pressure and drug adherence in patients with essential hypertension?
Does switching to a fixed-dose combination of an ARB and amlodipine improve home blood pressure and drug adherence in patients with essential hypertension?
Switching from free-drug combinations to fixed-dose combinations of an ARB and amlodipine significantly improves blood pressure control and drug adherence while reducing medication costs in hypertensive patients.
Fixed-dose combinations were associated with lower home BP and costs in this cohort; leaves open adherence benefits pending randomized trials.
We enrolled 196 patients with hypertension who were already being treated with free-drug combinations of angiotensin-II receptor blocker (ARB) and amlodipine. The free-drug combinations of ARB and amlodipine were replaced with the same dose of the fixed-dose combinations. The average home blood pressure (BP) in all patients receiving fixed-dose combinations was significantly lower than those receiving free-drug combinations (131 ± 10/75 ± 8 vs. 136 ± 11/77 ± 9 mm Hg, P < .01) accompanied with increasing drug adherence. After lowering BP by fixed-dose combinations, the costs for medications decreased by 31% over the 3 months.
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Kumagai et al. (2012) studied this question.
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