[Long-term treatment with a new antihypertensive drug: flutonidin]

The aim of this research was to evaluate the effectiveness and the tolerability of flutonidin: a new clonidine-like antihypertensive compound. 30 patients (9 man and 21 women, mean age 60.5), affected by mild-moderate essential hypertension, have been randomized in two homogeneous groups of 15 patients, and treated respectively with flutonidin (F) 2 mg/day and clonidine (C) 0.3 mg/day for a period of 15 days at the Hospital. We obtained 60% normalization of blood pressure values in patients of group F and 66% in the patients of group C. The treatment continued after discharge from Hospital at the same doses for a six months period in the 9 normalized patients of group F and in the 10 normalized patients of group C. The results showed an increase of the blood pressure mean values in both groups. Our data seem to indicate that: 1) Flutonidin and clonidine have comparable antihypertensive effect. 2) A partial loss of activity has been observed for both drugs. This phenomenon has been already noted in long-term treatment with clonidine. 3) The tolerability of two compounds resulted satisfactory.