Efficacy and safety of fluvastatin in hypertensive patients. An analysis of a clinical trial database.

The concurrence of hypertension and hypercholesterolemia leads to the clinical need to lower lipids in hypertensive patients. Thus, it is interesting to evaluate the efficacy and safety of fluvastatin, a new 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA)-reductase inhibitor, in such a patient population. A retrospective analysis of the clinical efficacy and safety of fluvastatin was based on the data from 1815 patients who received fluvastatin at daily doses of > or = 20 mg compared with 783 patients taking placebo. The results showed that 332 (18.3%) of the fluvastatin-treated and 124 (15.8%) of the placebo-treated patients were identified as having hypertension. The percentage change from baseline of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) in hypertensive patients taking fluvastatin at doses of 20 and 40 mg/day was -20% and -26%, respectively (placebo: 1.4%), and did not differ from the response in non-hypertensive patients. Increases in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) as well as decreases in triglycerides with fluvastatin were not consistently different between hypertensive and non-hypertensive patients. Irrespective of the presence or absence of hypertension, confirmed (measured on two consecutive occasions) increases > three times the upper limit of normal in aspartate aminotransferase (ASAT) and alanine aminotransferase (ALAT) were observed in three (0.2%) and 12 (0.7%) patients, respectively. With placebo, ALAT was increased in two patients (0.2%). The incidence of notable increases more than 10 times the upper limit of normal in creatine kinase was similar with fluvastatin compared with placebo (0.3% in both).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes