AMSTERDAM – Eighty percent of Americans with chronic kidney disease have comorbid hypertension, which is controlled in only 36% of cases, according to a large national study.
This is an area of significant unmet medical need in spite of the wide availability of antihypertensive medications, Panagiotis Mavros, Ph.D., said at the annual congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
He presented a cross-sectional study involving 159,306 American adults with stage 1-4 chronic kidney disease (CKD) identified in the GE Centricity electronic medical record database. Fifty-seven percent were in stage 3 and 29% were in stage 2 CKD.
Roughly 43% of this very large group of CKD patients carried the diagnosis of diabetes mellitus. Eighty percent of the CKD population had hypertension, including 10% of the overall study population with previously undiagnosed hypertension. Among the CKD patients with hypertension, 15% were not being treated for it, said Dr. Mavros of Merck in Whitehouse Station, N.J.
Blood pressure was controlled to the target of less than 130/80 mm Hg in 36% of patients with diagnosed hypertension.
Seventy-three percent of treated hypertensive patients with CKD were on combination therapy, typically with three different classes of antihypertensive drugs. Patients on more than three different classes of antihypertensive medications tended to have more advanced CKD. However, the proportion of treated patients with good blood pressure control did not differ according to CKD stage.
This cross-sectional study was funded by Merck. Dr. Mavros is a full-time company employee.