” and 15.6 % (n = 14) answered that “either is fine.” As for question B, 52.2 % of the patients (n = 47) replied that “medication-related expenses decreased” (Fig. 4B). Regarding question C, 33.3 % of the patients (n = 30) responded that “home blood pressure decreased”, whereas 47.8 % (n = 43) responded “no change” and 18.9 % (n = 17) responded that they “do not measure home blood pressure” (Fig. 4C). Regarding question D, 81.1 % of the patients (n = 73) answered that “they prefer the combination drug” https://www.selleckchem.com/products/dinaciclib-sch727965.html and only 3.3 % (n = 3) answered that they “prefer previous drugs” (Fig. 4D). Discussion Hypertension is the most frequently encountered disease in daily medical practice; however, the rate of achievement of target blood pressure

levels is not always high [9, 10]. The use of combination drugs has been advocated due to an improvement in adherence, leading to the achievement of target blood pressure and decrease in the

incidence of cardiovascular events [12, 13]. However, there have been virtually no clinical reports how antihypertensive drugs are replaced with combination drugs and what outcomes are obtained after the switch. Our present results revealed several findings. The first finding is that the largest number of patients was the category of “no change in drug potency” after switch to combined formulation. This suggests that in most cases, the contents of the antihypertensive Ku-0059436 molecular weight drugs themselves are left unchanged. The group with the second largest number of patients was the category of “increase in drug potency”. Interestingly, this group had higher blood pressure before switching treatment, revealing that switch was also intended to increase in potency in these cases. Secondly, in our study, Vorinostat most of the patients took less than three kinds of oral antihypertensive drugs. According to the ALLHAT study, approximately 30 % of patients with blood pressure controlled at 140/90 mmHg or lower were reported to be taking at least 3 different types of drugs orally [14]. According to the CRIC study,

32 % of CKD patients were reported to be taking at least 4 different types of drugs orally [15]. Our findings showed that while patients taking more than 4 different oral antihypertensive drugs are frequently seen in daily clinical practice, these patients are not selected to switch to combined drugs. We also examined how the combination drugs were selected and used by each physician. The findings showed that in many cases, the patients had already been using the same ARB and CCB included in the combined drugs or the combined drugs included the same ARB which patients had already used. This may reflect the fact that antihypertensive therapy had been conducted with a focus on ARB, as recommended by various guidelines pertaining to hypertension. In this study, a significant decrease in blood pressure was found not only in the group that showed an increase in potency but also in the group in which potency remained unchanged.