Statins in hypertension: are they a new class of antihypertensive agents?

High blood pressure is a very common disease in hypercholesterolemic and diabetic patients and contributes to the increase in cardiovascular risk. Inhibitors of 3OH-3methyl-glutaryl-coenzyme A reductase are the most effective and widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs. They significantly reduce the risk of cardiovascular events and death in both primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Although the long-term benefit by statin treatment is largely attributed to their cholesterol-lowering action, increasing attention focuses on additional actions called "pleitropic effects" that might explain the cardiovascular protection seen shortly after the initiation of therapy. Very few and small studies have investigated the antihypertensive effect of statins in patients with hypertension associated with hypercholesterolemia, and the results of recently published large statin studies (albeit not designed to answer this question) have attracted the interest on this subject. Many other studies, also not specifically aimed at the evaluation of the statins' antihypertensive effect, have provided information concerning changes in blood pressure during treatment with statins, but severe limitations such as inadequate study design, small or very small sample size, too short of a treatment period, and modification of concomitant antihypertensive therapy have prevented finding a definitive effect on blood pressure. From the available results, it appears consistent that statins may be useful in hypertensives with high serum total cholesterol, in those whose hypertension is not well controlled with antihypertensive agents even without high serum total cholesterol, in hypertensive subjects well controlled with antihypertensives without high serum cholesterol when they have high polymerase chain reaction levels, in those who require preventive measures because of other concomitant cardiovascular risk factors, or when they require secondary prevention. Future research could further characterize the impact of statin use alone or in combination with antihypertensive agents to delay the development of Stage 1 hypertension in prehypertension.