Does blockade of the renin angiotensin system affect sympathetic and blood pressure responses to amlodipine in young hypertensive patients?

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Angiotensin II in the context of low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension, published as a randomized controlled trial.

The researchers evaluated whether quinapril unmasks angiotensin II-dependent sympathetic activity on amlodipine.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults and middle-aged adults, both men and women.

Muscle sympathetic nerve activity (MSNA) and plasma hormones were analyzed at the end of each treatment period.

Twenty-one subjects completed this study.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and crossover study.

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

Blinding on both sides kept the participants and researchers unaware of who received Angiotensin II.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Angiotensin II group a baseline to be compared against.

Each person switched between Angiotensin II and the comparison at some point, usually with a gap in between.

A time span of 1 week appears in the methods.

In this double-blind, randomized, clinical trial, young mild hypertensives were randomized to quinapril for 1 week (study 1), followed by quinapril + amlodipine for 6 weeks (study 2), followed by amlodipine + placebo for 6 weeks (study 3), or else were randomized to placebo for 1 week (study 1), followed by placebo + amlodipine for 6 weeks (study 2), followed by amlodipine + quinapril for 6 weeks (study 3).

What Was Measured

The researchers evaluated whether quinapril unmasks angiotensin II-dependent sympathetic activity on amlodipine.

The subject headings attached to it are Amlodipine, Angiotensin I, Angiotensin II, Angiotensin II Type 1 Receptor Blockers, Antihypertensive Agents, Blood Pressure and Drug Interactions.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Angiotensin II in people with low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension over 1 week.

Its findings take up roughly 7 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2007 (American journal of hypertension), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Angiotensin II compound page, Low blood pressure and orthostatic hypotension research.