Utilization of antihypertensive drugs in obesity-related hypertension: a retrospective observational study in a cohort of patients from Southern Italy

BACKGROUND: Although the pathophysiological mechanisms of arterial hypertension are different in obese and lean patients, hypertension guidelines do not include specific recommendations for obesity-related hypertension and, therefore, there is a considerable uncertainty on which antihypertensive drugs should be used in this condition. Moreover, studies performed in general population suggested that some antihypertensive drugs may increase body weight, glycemia and LDL-cholesterol but it is unclear how this impact on drug choice in clinical practice in the treatment of obese hypertensive patients. Therefore, in order to identify current preferences of practitioners for obesity-related hypertension, in the present work we evaluated antihypertensive drug therapy in a cohort of 129 pharmacologically treated obese hypertensive patients (46 males and 83 females, aged 51.95 ± 10.1 years) that came to our observation for a nutritional consultation. METHODS: Study design was retrospective observational. Differences in the prevalence of use of the different antihypertensive drug classes among groups were evaluated with χ(2) square analysis. Threshold for statistical significance was set at p < 0.05. RESULTS: 41.1 % of the study sample was treated with one, 36.4 % with two and the remaining 22.5 % with three or more antihypertensive drugs. In patients under single drug therapy, β-blockers, ACEIs and ARBs accounted each for about 25 % of prescriptions. The prevalence of use of β-blockers was about sixfold higher in females than males. Diuretics were virtually never used in monotherapy regimens but were used in more than 60 % of patients on dual antihypertensive therapy and in all patients assuming three or more drugs. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of use of any of the aforementioned drugs among patients with obesity of type I, II and III or between patients with or without metabolic syndrome. CONCLUSIONS: Our data show that no first choice protocol seems to be adopted in clinical practice for the treatment of obesity-related hypertension. Importantly, physicians do not seem to differentiate drug use according to the severity of obesity or to the presence of metabolic syndrome or to avoid drugs known to detrimentally affect body weight and metabolic profile in general population.