Expanding role for single‐pill combination drug therapy in the initial treatment of hypertension?

Abstract

Arterial hypertension is a major health concern worldwide. 1 High arterial blood pressure (BP) is the leading modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), contributing to the greatest global burden of disease. 2 If the presence of hypertension can be correctly diagnosed, the risk of future cardiovascular complications and events can be markedly suppressed with BP-lowering medications and dietary and lifestyle interventions. [2][3][4] However, despite the increased awareness of the importance of maintaining healthy BP values and the availability of multiple intervention options and therapies, a high percentage of hypertensive individuals fail to control their high BP and thus prevent the development of CVD. One of the major reasons for this failure is that there are major deficiencies with respect to the awareness and diagnosis of high BP, the available BP-lowering treatments, and drug adherence; moreover, these problems persist across low-, middle-, and high-income countries, emphasizing the need for widespread population-level improvement in the understanding of hypertension. 5 Over the last decade, BP control rates have plateaued worldwide at low levels. It was reported that the rates of BP control are 17-31% in hypertensive patients in high-income countries, and the con-This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.