Prescribing for hypertension

Last month, the research round-up provided you with an overview of three articles concerned with prescribing benzodiazepines. This month, we will review three articles around the management of hypertension. The first looks at recent medication advances in the management of resistant hypertension. The second article reviews treatment modalities in hypertensive heart failure. Finally, our third article deals with medication and guideline adherence in hypertension and hyperlipidaemia.

This article, published in the journal Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine, sought to provide an update on the current clinical and pharmacological management of resistant hypertension. This review of recent and published research by the authors focuses on new and novel pharmacological therapies in the treatment of raised blood pressure (BP).

The review begins with an overview of resistant hypertension, and diagnosis of such, as well as investigation of possible secondary causes before discussing traditional management approaches. The follow-on to this is a review of new medications, which includes non-steroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists, dual endothelin receptor antagonists, aldosterone synthase inhibitors, and angiotensinogen synthesis inhibitors.