Advances in Combination Cardiovascular Medications

摘要

Patients with cardiovascular disease may require treatment with several different classes of medications. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have long combined various antihy-pertensive medications in the same formulation to improve compliance. They now have begun to focus on placing various other combinations of cardiovascular medications in the same dosage form, which may simplify complex regimens and might lower drug cost. A computer-assisted search of the National Library of Medicine's Medline database was performed to find original research related to combination formulations of pravastatin/aspirin, amlodipine/atorvastatin, and ezetimibe/simvastatin. In addition, the Web sites of various pharmaceutical manufacturers and press releases from the pharmaceutical manufacturers and various organizations were reviewed. Pravastatin/aspirin is now available as Pravigard PAC as co-packaged tablets and may be available as a single tablet in the future. Amlodipine/atorvastatin has shown potential benefit, and it has been submitted to FDA for approval. Several studies have examined the combination of ezetimibe and various statin medications, and an application for approval of a single dosage form containing ezetimibe and simvastatin was filed with the FDA in November 2003. Combination cardiovascular medications seem to be drawing significant interest, and new combinations may be developed if these prove to be popular with patients.