A study on drug utilization pattern of antihypertensive drugs in hypertensive diabetic patients

Background: Hypertension management is of paramount importance in diabetic patients for reduction of cardiovascular and other complications. The objective of the present study was to assess prescribing pattern of antihypertensive drugs in hypertensive type 2 diabetic patients and evaluate them by comparing with Eighth Joint National Committee (JNC-8) hypertension treatment guidelines.Methods: A prospective observational study was carried out on 110 hypertensive type 2 diabetic patients of age 41-80 years visiting outpatient department of Medicine at G.S. Medical College and Hospital, UP, India for 4 months. JNC-8 hypertension management guideline was considered while evaluating the prescribed drugs. All the relevant data was collected from the prescription card of the patient on a preformed performa and analyzed using descriptive statistics.Results: Total of 176 drugs was prescribed to the study patients among which two drug combination therapy (55.45%) was mostly used. The most common group prescribed was angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) (29.45%) and ARB+CCB (calcium channel blockers) (34.92%) were the commonest fixed drug combination. Overall, it was amlodipine (21.47%) that was most frequently prescribed among all antihypertensive drugs.Conclusions: ARB was the most commonest class, ARB+CCB was the most frequent fixed drug combination prescribed to the study patient while amlodipine was the highly utilized individual antihypertensive drug in the study. Prescriptions evaluation revealed that 94.88% prescription were rational and were in accordance with the JNC-8 hypertension treatment guidelines except the use of beta blockers (5.12%).