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Published on: June 7, 2016
Angiotensin receptor blockers in hypertension and cardiovascular diseases
1Hypertension Unit, Department of Internal Medicine, Hospital Clinic, 170-Villarroel, 08036-Barcelona, Spain. asierra@clinic.ub.es
Insights
Angiotensin receptor blockers are effective antihypertensive drugs offering significant cardiovascular protection. These agents demonstrate benefits across various conditions, including heart failure and diabetic renal dysfunction.
Area of Science:
- Cardiology
- Pharmacology
Background:
- Hypertension management is crucial for cardiovascular health.
- Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) represent a recent class of antihypertensive medications.
- Growing evidence supports ARBs' benefits beyond blood pressure reduction.
Purpose of the Study:
- To review the evidence for beneficial effects of ARBs in cardiovascular disorders.
- To highlight ARBs' impact on mortality, morbidity, and surrogate endpoints.
Main Methods:
- Systematic review of evidence-based medicine, including controlled studies.
- Analysis of data from patients with left ventricular dysfunction, heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, and renal dysfunction.
Main Results:
- ARBs show benefits in patients post-myocardial infarction, with congestive heart failure, and cerebrovascular disease.
- In type-2 diabetics with renal dysfunction and high-risk hypertensives, ARBs improve outcomes.
- ARBs prevent type-2 diabetes, reduce left ventricular hypertrophy, decrease proteinuria, improve endothelial function, and lower inflammatory markers.
Conclusions:
- Angiotensin receptor blockers are effective antihypertensive agents with a favorable efficacy and tolerability profile.
- ARBs provide significant cardiovascular protection, marking a key advancement in hypertension treatment.
- These drugs offer a promising option for managing hypertension and associated cardiovascular risks.
Abstract:
Angiotensin receptor blockers are the newest class of antihypertensive agents marketed for the treatment of hypertension. There is now an important amount of evidence indicating that this class of drugs exerts beneficial effects in patients with a variety of cardiovascular disorders. Evidence-based medicine includes well controlled studies with mortality and morbidity endpoints in patients with left ventricular dysfunction after a myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, type-2 diabetic subjects with renal dysfunction and high-risk hypertensive patients. In addition to these hard endpoints, treatment with angiotensin receptor blockers prevents the development of type-2 diabetes, promotes a more pronounced regression of left ventricular hypertrophy, decreases microalbuminuria and proteinuria in renal patients, ameliorates coronary and peripheral vascular endothelial dysfunction and decreases plasma levels of several markers of vascular inflammation. In summary, angiotensin receptor blockers are antihypertensive drugs with a very good profile in terms of efficacy, tolerability and cardiovascular protection. They represent an important step in the search for the ideal antihypertensive agent.
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