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BP And Cholesterol Can Be Controlled By A Single Pill |
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A recent study found that the people who are suffering from both high blood pressure (BP) and cholesterol might get relief from taking one pill only. The researchers from the study have stated that they have found a new pill that is able to serve both the purposes at a time and hence, the patients need not to take different drugs for the diseases from now. They said that though controlling high blood pressure and lowering the bad cholesterol can be a tough task for a number of people, they became successful to do it.
While describing the outcome and the method of their study, the researchers of the recent study said that they have conducted it on the African-Americans. According to one of the researches, they found in their study that a single pill that contains a blood pressure-lowering drug and a cholesterol-lowering drug has the potentiality to become useful for the purpose. They said that this single pill combo is being marketed as Caduet by Pfizer and the pill contains a combination of the drugs named amlodipine and atorvastatin. Amlodepine is used for treating high blood pressure and atorvastatin is used to lower cholesterol.
The researchers at the Wayne State University Health Center in Detroit have recently conducted a study on 1170 African American patients with a view to find out the real effectiveness of this drug. They enrolled 501 patients in this study and they gave drug therapy to the other 499 patients. They found the 499 patients to have uncontrolled hypertension and dyslipidemia (high cholesterol) and thus, they gave them the Caduet in eight different dosage strengths. They also increased the dosage strengths of Caduet when they felt it to be required. They studied all the patients for a period of 20 weeks.
After conducting the study and getting the results, the researchers noticed that the single pill combination was useful in controlling both hypertension and dyslipidemia. They found that less than 1 percent of patients did achieve the control of hypertension and dyslipidemia, when the study began. However, by the end of the study period, half of the subjects became able to achieve the control. According to the researchers, 236 out of 489 patients were found to be able to control both their BP and cholesterol and another 4 were found at the baseline. The researcher also observed that the patients tolerated the single-pill combination very well and the most common treatment-related adverse events that they showed included peripheral swelling (3.4 percent), headache (2.2 percent), muscle pain (2.2 percent) and constipation (2.0 percent). Thus, the researchers came to the conclusion that the single pill combo has the capability to help the people with high BP and cholesterol to control the levels.
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