[Efficacy and tolerance of doxazosin in the treatment of isolated systolic hypertension in hypertensive patients over 60 years of age].

Isolated Systolic Arterial Hypertension (ISAH) is the most frequent form of AHT in the aged population, resulting in an increase of the cardiovascular risk, mainly at the cerebrovascular level. In this open non-comparative study, we analyze the effect of doxazosin, an alpha-adrenergic blocker in 40 patients older than 60 years, diagnosed of isolated systolic hypertension. After 2 weeks of lavage, the patients received treatment with doxazosin according to a monotherapy scheme, with progressive increase of the dose, from 1 to 16 mg/day during a period of 14 weeks. Doxazosin significantly reduces the systolic and diastolic arterial pressure (p < 0.001) with a therapeutical response in 86.5% of the cases, using an average dose of 3.4 mg/day and without observing modifications in the heart rate. This drug improves the lipidic profile, with a reduction of the plasmatic levels of total cholesterol and cholesterol linked to low density proteins (LDL) with p < 0.05 and a reduction of triglycerides. Among the 40 patients included in the study, 10 (25%) referred side effects; there were 2 drop-outs (5%) and the dose had to be reduced in 2 patients (5%). In conclusion, doxazosin shows its antihypertensive effectiveness in the treatment of isolated systolic hypertension in patients older than 60 years and it is well tolerated by most of the patients, improving at the same time the lipidic profile. Hence, it contributes to the reduction of the cardiovascular morbidity-mortality in this group of patients.