6533b821fe1ef96bd127abec

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Evidences from Clinical Trials and Use of Antihypertensive Drugs in Children and Adolescents

subject

description

In adults, when prescribing antihypertensive therapy, decisions regarding the choice of agent can be based upon evidence from clinical trials in large numbers of subjects, many of these having compared one class of agent with another. Whilst increased emphases on conducting drug trials in children and adolescents over the past 25 years have yielded important advances, and have tested the efficacy and safety of the various classes of antihypertensive agents, there remains a general lack of high quality long-term outcome data to guide choice of drug therapy for pediatricians managing HTN. As of today, certain clinical trials in children and adolescents have established the pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, efficacy lowering BP and safety of many classes of antihypertensive drugs. In the lack of strong evidence to recommend one class of antihypertensive medication over the other, given the substantial efforts that have been made to perform pediatric-specific studies confirming efficacy and safety in children, it seems sensible to commence therapy with those agents which have a license for use on children.