Potential Drug - Drug Interactions among Medications Prescribed to Hypertensive Patients

摘要

Context: Drug-drug interactions(DDIs) are significant but avoidable causes of iatrogenic morbidity and hospital admission.Aim: To detect potential drug-drug interactions among medications received by hypertensive patients.Materials and Methods: Patients of both sex and all adult age groups, who were attending medicine out -patient department (OPD) of a tertiary care teaching rural hospital since last six months and were being prescribed antihypertensive drug/s for essential hypertension, were selected for the study. Hypertensive patient with co-morbities diabetes mellitus, ischemic heart diseases, congestive heart failure, and chronic renal diseases were also included in the study. Potential drug drug interactions were checked with medscape drug interaction software.Results: With the help of medscape drug interaction software, 71.50% prescriptions were identified having atleast one drug-drug interaction. Total 918 DDIs were found in between 58 drug pairs. 55.23% DDIs were pharmacodynamic, 4.79% pharmacokinetic type of DDIs. 32.24% DDIs were found affecting serum potassium level. 95.42% DDIs were found significant type of DDIs. Drug drug interaction between atenolol & amlodipine was the most common DDI (136) followed by metoprolol and amlodine (88) in this study. Atenolol and amlodipine ( 25.92%) was the most common drugs to cause DDIs in our study.Conclusion: We detected a significant number of drug drug interaction in hypertensive patients. These interactions were between antihypertensive agents or between hypertensive and drug for co-morbid condition.