Potential Drug - Drug Interactions among Medications Prescribed to Hypertensive Patients

Drug-drug interactions(DDIs) are significant but avoidable causes of iatrogenic morbidity and hospital admission.

To detect potential drug-drug interactions among medications received by hypertensive patients.

Patients of both sex and all adult age groups, who were attending medicine out -patient department (OPD) of a tertiary care teaching rural hospital since last six months and were being prescribed antihypertensive drug/s for essential hypertension, were selected for the study. Hypertensive patient with co-morbities diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart diseases, congestive heart failure, and chronic renal diseases were also included in the study. Potential drug drug interactions were checked with medscape drug interaction software.

With the help of medscape drug interaction software, 71.50% prescriptions were identified having atleast one drug-drug interaction. Total 918 DDIs were found in between 58 drug pairs. 55.23% DDIs were pharmacodynamic, 4.79% pharmacokinetic type of DDIs. 32.24% DDIs were found affecting serum potassium level. 95.42% DDIs were found significant type of DDIs. Drug drug interaction between atenolol & amlodipine was the most common DDI (136) followed by metoprolol and amlodine (88) in this study. Atenolol and amlodipine ( 25.92%) was the most common drugs to cause DDIs in our study.

We detected a significant number of drug drug interaction in hypertensive patients. These interactions were between antihypertensive agents or between hypertensive and drug for co-morbid condition.