Effect of the renin-angiotensin system or calcium channel blockade on the circadian variation of heart rate variability, blood pressure and circulating catecholamines in hypertensive patients.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at Amlodipine and Ramipril in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

Who Took Part

The study group was 57 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, open-label and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Amlodipine and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Nothing was hidden in this open-label Amlodipine study: the patients and staff both knew the treatment.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Amlodipine could be set against what happens without it.

Autonomic functions were assessed by norepinephrine (NE) and epinephrine (E), as well as by the spectral analysis of heart rate variability (HRV).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Amlodipine, Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Blockers, Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors, Benzimidazoles, Benzoates, Blood Pressure and Calcium Channel Blockers.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, open-label and placebo-controlled study of Amlodipine and Ramipril in 57 patients in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 8 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2005 (Journal of hypertension), a journal based in Netherlands.

More context: Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.