Lercanidipine for essential hypertension in young patients:Clinical evaluation by ambulatory blood pressure monitoring

Objective The application of dynamic monitoring of blood pressure in evaluating the clinical effect of antihypertensive drugs plays an important role in management of hypertension.This study aims at evaluating the effects of lercanidipine on essential hypertension and various indexes of ambulatory blood pressure monitoring in young patients.Methods We treated 52 young patients(aged 28-44 yr,mean 39 yr) with essential hypertension with oral lercanidipine at 10 mg/d for 2 months,and analyzed the indexes of 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure monitoring before and after the treatment.Results Blood pressure,especially diastolic pressure,was increased all day in most of the young essential hypertension patients.Abnormal circadian rhythm of blood pressure(non-dipper) was observed in 71% of the patients.Both systolic and diastolic pressure returned to normal(P0.01) the whole day and the mean pulse pressure slightly decreased after lercanidipine administration(P0.05).Both systolic and diastolic pressure decreased significantly during the night after medication(P0.05).However,changes from non-dipper into dipper blood pressure circadian rhythms were found in only 22% of the patients.Conclusion Oral lercanidipine can markedly decrease blood pressure and blood pressure load in young essential hypertension patients.At the same time,it can also improve the blood pressure circadian rhythm to some extent.