Summary

An alternative to avoid the negative effect of partial adherence of hypertensive patients to treatment consists in prescribing drugs with a long lasting action, so that it compensates “skipped” dose(s) of medication. This study aimed to investigate blood pressure profile of mild/moderate hypertensives undergoing treatment with amlodipine or captopril during one-week interruption of treatment. Fifty-two mild to moderate (JNC-V) essential hypertensives were selected. After the interruption of previous treatment patients received placebo during 15 days. After this period they received amlodipine 5-10mg once daily or captopril 25-50mg twice daily on a random order. After 8 weeks of active treatment, it was interrupted and the patients received placebo again during 7 days. The ambulatory blood pressure monitoring performed during the first 48 hours of this period showed systolic, diastolic and mean arterial pressure levels were significantly lower in amlodipine group than in captopril group even though there were no differences between the first and second days of recording between the two groups. The measurements taken with automatic oscilometric device and mercury manometer showed lower levels of systolic and diastolic blood pressure only in amlodipine group. These results suggest that amlodipine may be useful to maintain lower levels of blood pressure during prolonged periods of “skipped” medications.