[Antihypertensive treatment in type II diabetes and diabetic nephropathy]

Hypertension is very prevalent in patients with type II diabetes. Beside increasing the cardiovascular risk, hypertension has several deleterious effects on the kidney: hypertension promotes the development of diabetic nephropathy, the progression from microalbuminuria to overt diabetic nephropathy and progression to end stage renal disease. In this review, we analyze systematically the benefit of antihypertensive therapy in patients with type II diabetes, with either normo-albuminuria, microalbuminuria or overt nephropathy. General considerations are developed about the general use of antihypertensive drugs in this population. An approach based on the prevention of the global or absolute cardiovascular risk is further recommended due to the very high cardiovascular burden in this diabetic patients.